Castelon Konkiewitz Elisabete, Ziff Edward B
Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde (FCS), Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados (UFGD), Dourados, Brazil.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
Eur Neurol. 2024;87(5-6):261-272. doi: 10.1159/000541361. Epub 2024 Sep 12.
In this paper, we argue that recent unprecedented social changes arising from social media and the internet represent powerful behavioral and environmental forces that are driving human evolutionary adaptive responses in a way that might reshape our brain and the way it perceives reality and interacts with it. These forces include decreases in physical activity, decreases in exposure to light, and face-to-face social interactions, as well as diminished predictability in biological rhythms (i.e., the sleep cycle is no longer dictated by natural light exposure and season).
We discuss the roles of stress and of creativity and adaptability in Homo sapiens evolution and propose mechanisms for human adaptation to the new forces including epigenetic mechanisms, gene-culture coevolution, and novel mechanisms of evolution of the nervous system.
We present the provocative idea that evolution under the strong selective pressures of today's society could ultimately enable H. sapiens to thrive despite social, physical, circadian, and cultural deprivation and possible neurological disease, and thus withstand the loss of factors that contribute to H. sapiens survival of today. The new H. sapiens would flourish under a lifestyle in which the current form would feel undervalued and replaceable.
在本文中，我们认为社交媒体和互联网引发的前所未有的社会变革代表了强大的行为和环境力量，正以可能重塑我们的大脑及其感知现实并与之互动方式的形式推动人类进化适应性反应。这些力量包括身体活动减少、光照暴露减少、面对面社交互动减少，以及生物节律的可预测性降低（即睡眠周期不再由自然光照暴露和季节决定）。
我们讨论了压力以及创造力和适应性在智人进化中的作用，并提出了人类适应这些新力量的机制，包括表观遗传机制、基因 - 文化共同进化以及神经系统进化的新机制。
我们提出了一个具有启发性的观点，即在当今社会强大的选择压力下的进化最终可能使智人即使在社会、身体、昼夜节律和文化剥夺以及可能的神经疾病情况下仍能繁荣发展，从而承受导致当今智人生存的因素的丧失。新的智人将在一种当前形式会感到被低估和可替代的生活方式下蓬勃发展。
