Most of the time it’s a good thing that the human brain has a great ongoing capacity to learn and change. It allows useful adaptation throughout the lifespan and the development of complex skills like language. But it’s possible that this long period of plasticity also exposes the brain to psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia. A new theory posits that Neanderthals were immune to schizophrenia because of the simplicity and short development period of their brain.
Lee Seldon, the author of this theory, said “because of the long maturation time [of modern-day human brains], environmental factors have more time to exert modifying influences on the final outcome.” He suggests that if we had a short window of development opportunity, like the Neanderthals, “we would not have such well-developed language and we would likely not have so much schizophrenia.” (Seldon quotes derived from the Discovery article, Study: Neanderthal Brain Less Troubled.)
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Shorter plasticity might have made schizophrenia less likely to occur. However, I guess different mutations may lead to different vulnerability to particular triggers. It’s possible, that at least in some gene variants those triggers don’t have to occur in late plastic period, or don’t have to occur at all.
genetics
I read one ladies description of schizophrenia as basically a small brain issue. So things like lack of activity, lack of stimulation, lack of brain nutritional requirements, damaging excesses often described as things such as stress, alcohol which although it momentarily stimulates some activity generally decreases and can destroy brain connections, and day to day wear and tear all can enhance less connections, less activity and smaller brain functioning. As primitive lifestyles require so much activity they naturally avoid the “vegetating” lack of stimulation from doing nothing.
So the morning after hangover and when someone is very fatigued are day to day examples of such small brain difficulty in coping. There is another similar effect where the brain is so busy with a lot of things that on one skill or issue it can seem very similarly challenged.
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