Thursday, February 15, 2007

More evidence of hacked wetware: the DARPP-32 gene and schizophrenia

I think humans have hacked and buggy wetware. I predict that studies underway on the frequency of autism in Ashkenazi populations will show that some of the genes underlying autism also have adaptive advantages.

In the meantime, we may be seeing this in schizophrenia: FuturePundit: Intelligence Boosting Gene Ups Schizophrenia Risk. The DARPP-32 gene provides a cognitive boost, but may also increase the risk of developing some forms of the mixed set of disorders we call "schizophrenia". This is what you see with "new" mutations that haven't been fully debugged yet.

The sooner we understand how buggy all our minds are, the sooner we'll learn wisdom, tolerance, and forgiveness.

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