Ponzi Davide, Parmigiani Stefano, Paterlini Silvia, Bellantoni Mariateresa, Palanza Paola
Department of Medicine and Surgery, Unit of Neuroscience, University of Parma, viale delle Scienze 11A, Parma 43124, Italy.
Department of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, Unit of Evolutionary Biology, University of Parma, viale delle Scienze 11A, Parma 43124, Italy.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2025 Feb;169:106009. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106009. Epub 2025 Jan 11.
Ultimate and proximate levels of analysis offer synergistic explanations can improve the search for causes of disease and their cures. Here we review how several principles of evolutionary biology such as historical contingencies, mismatches, trade-offs, sexual selection and genomic conflict are applied to problems in medicine and psychiatry. The application of evolutionary principles to many other domains of medicine, among them mental disorders, have not received the same reception from preclinical and clinical researchers. The lack of a well-coordinated interdisciplinarity may be one reason for the slow application of evolutionary principles to biomedicine and psychiatry. This is exemplified by the case of ethopharmacology, an evolutionary approach to psychopharmacology strongly proposed and applied by ethologists but apparently unknown to many evolutionary minded scholars. Another reason has to do with the lack of efforts from many medical schools to integrate evolution and its principles in their curriculum studiorum. Interestingly, this Darwinian approach is generating an important evolutionary epistemology for the study of body and human mind health and diseases.
终极分析层面和近端分析层面提供了协同解释，有助于改进对疾病病因及其治疗方法的探寻。在此，我们回顾进化生物学的若干原理，如历史偶然性、错配、权衡、性选择和基因组冲突，是如何应用于医学和精神病学问题的。进化原理在医学的许多其他领域，包括精神障碍领域的应用，尚未得到临床前和临床研究人员的同等认可。缺乏良好协调的跨学科性可能是进化原理在生物医学和精神病学中应用缓慢的一个原因。行为药理学的情况就是例证，行为学家强烈提议并应用了一种精神药理学的进化方法，但许多有进化思维的学者显然对此并不了解。另一个原因与许多医学院校未努力将进化及其原理纳入其课程体系有关。有趣的是，这种达尔文式方法正在为身体和人类心理健康及疾病研究产生一种重要的进化认识论。
