Publication Date
1-3-2024
Journal
Neuron
DOI
10.1016/j.neuron.2023.10.037
PMID
38016473
PMCID
PMC10842497
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
1-3-2025
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Author MSS
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
Humans, Mutation, Mental Disorders
Abstract
The forces of evolution-mutation, selection, migration, and genetic drift-shape the genetic architecture of human traits, including the genetic architecture of complex neuropsychiatric illnesses. Studying these illnesses in populations that are diverse in genetic ancestry, historical demography, and cultural history can reveal how evolutionary forces have guided adaptation over time and place. A fundamental truth of shared human biology is that an allele responsible for a disease in anyone, anywhere, reveals a gene critical to the normal biology underlying that condition in everyone, everywhere. Understanding the genetic causes of neuropsychiatric disease in the widest possible range of human populations thus yields the greatest possible range of insight into genes critical to human brain development. In this perspective, we explore some of the relationships between genes, adaptation, and history that can be illuminated by an evolutionary perspective on studies of complex neuropsychiatric disease in diverse populations.
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