Humans have more myelen than any other vertebrate. Does that make us, as a species, more mad?

Humans have more myelen than any other vertebrate. Does that make us, as a species, more mad? I've run across some interesting papers out of UCLA arguing that myelin may play a more significant role in human mental health at all stages of life than was previously thought.

The author's position is that "evolutionary change that defines our uniqueness as a species" and "our unique vulnerability to highly prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders. " Here are summaries of several of these published works:newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=7518ht... more white matter explain why we humans have higher incidence of mental illness than other animals? What are other contributing factors?

I must state that I am only *assuming* that humans present more frequent and varied mental illnesses and neuropsychiatric disorders than other animals. If anyone can dispute that, please feel free to correct me and I'll be happy to turn my attention to a discussion of all of the mad mammals I've missed on my walks in the woods. Asked by Persnicula 54 months ago Similar Questions: Humans myelen vertebrate make species mad Recent Questions About: Humans myelen vertebrate make species mad Science > Biology.

Similar Questions: Humans myelen vertebrate make species mad Recent Questions About: Humans myelen vertebrate make species mad.

Actually, it is less myelin that is the problem. Myelin acts as a kind of insulation that allows signals to travel rapidly along nerve cells. Without myelin, the nerve eventually stops functioning.

Those two articles talk about disruption of the brain's myelination process, i.e. , the process of building a myelin sheath around axons. They say that that disruption has many causes, and may contribute to mental illness or substance abuse in adolescents, and Alzheimer's in the elderly.

The articles don't really say what kind of evidence the researchers have for that idea. They talk about applying a new "model of human brain development" without saying whether that model actually corresponds to reality (as useful models should. ) And they say the researchers examined NMR images and post-mortem tissue, but they don't say if they saw correlations between something they saw and mental illness (which is what you would expect, so the fact they don't say that is odd.

) But if it is true, then it does open up a new approach to understanding and treating mental illness, which is exciting. It occurs to me that adolescents do have poor impulse control and tend not to foresee consequences of their actions. But that is apparently part of normal brain development, and has been for a long, long time.

You would think that better impulse control would be a survival advantage, and so that adolescent trait would evolve away (or never appear. ) I wonder if those teenage traits function to increase the amount of sex that teens have. Teens with poor impulse control might tend to have more sex, so the genes allowing that poor impulse control would tend to propagate.

If the teen later dies while driving drunk, evolution isn't interested in that. The ability to see ahead and restrain impulses would be more useful in adulthood, when humans have to rear the fruits of their youthful exuberance. So in other words, I wonder if the poor impulse control in teens isn't adaptive in an evolutionary sense.

As to whether humans have higher incidences of mental disorders, that is hard to say, for several reasons. One is that mental disorders are defined by things that often don't apply to animals. A lot of mental disorders are thought disorders, so only a few animals, if any at all, could even potentially have those problems.

But there are also mood disorders that some animals, or at least mammals, could have. And actually, people have diagnosed depression in dogs, for example. But just from my own personal observation, humans seem more prone to depression than dogs.

And animals could have neurological disorders that create "mental illness. " For instance, there are some dog breeds that can suffer from phobic or avoidant disorders, i.e. , they are pathologically shy.

But those disorders are rare in humans anyway. But in a broader sense, you can define mental illness in functional or experiental terms. In the first, you can define a mental illness as a condition that interferes with normal human functioning (holding a job, having a spouse, whatever.

) Those seem rare in animals, but they are actually pretty rare in humans too. The other definition would be a condition that interferes with experiencing happiness, contentment, security, whatever. And you could apply that definition to animals, possibly.

But the problem with that definition is that it assumes that happiness is the healthy, default position of the human mind, like a resting heart rate of less than 120. But I am not sure about that. If the function of emotions is to provide reproductive or survival advantage, then they might function as a system of internal communication.

Fear would mean you should get away. Happiness would be a reward for doing something survival-promoting, like eating a large salty meal, or having sex. I would imagine the default position of humans, and most animals in the wild, is of mild anxiety, i.e.

, they aren't entirely happy. If that is the case, then would most animals be therefore suffering from an anxiety disorder? .

1 Oh, god, I love this question. As usual, I have nothing intelligent to contribute--but let's put it like this: Take that walk in the woods, then come home and watch an hour's TV news (or regular programming, for that matter. ) What other conclusion could you come to?

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Oh, god, I love this question. As usual, I have nothing intelligent to contribute--but let's put it like this: Take that walk in the woods, then come home and watch an hour's TV news (or regular programming, for that matter. ) What other conclusion could you come to?

2 Oops, sorry, I misspelled 'myelin' in my question title. How embarrassing. Drat that no edits feature!

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Oops, sorry, I misspelled 'myelin' in my question title. How embarrassing. Drat that no edits feature!

3 ...and the text should read, 'The author's position is that the amount of myelin in our brains is the "evolutionary change that defines our uniqueness as a species"Double dog drat! .

...and the text should read, 'The author's position is that the amount of myelin in our brains is the "evolutionary change that defines our uniqueness as a species"Double dog drat!

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.