The putative link between mania and creativity refuses to go away. In the final chapter of NOT A CHIMP I describe how many of the genes implicated at one time or another in schizophrenia, appear to have been positively selected both in the primate lineages and, uniquely, in the human lineage. All these positively selected genes are active in the brain where they seem responsible for synapse development, and the many energy producing processes that fuel the brain's activity. The implication is that the human brain is now running at optimum and that anything that throws a spanner into its metabolic works could produce the effects we diagnose as mental illness.
Szabolcs Keri, from Semmelweis University in Hungary has concentrated on just one of these genes that, on the one hand, develops and strengthens the communication between neurons, and, on the other, can predispose to schizophrenia - neuregulin 1. He has shown that volunteers with a certain variant of this gene perform particularly well on tests for intelligence and creativity, while, as we know, another variant of the gene is a prime schizophrenia suspect. He observes, "molecular factors that are loosely associated with severe mental disorders but are present in healthy people may have an advantage enabling us to think more creatively". The article concludes: "In addition, these findings suggest that certain genetic variations, even though associated with adverse health problems, may survive evolutionary selection and remain in a population's gene pool if they also have beneficial effects".
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