"Adaptive behavior produces maladaptive anxiety"
Frazer Meacham
University of Washington
Normal anxiety is considered an adaptive response to the possible presence of danger, but it appears highly susceptible to dysregulation. Anxiety disorders are prevalent at high frequency in contemporary human societies, yet impose substantial disability upon their sufferers. This raises a puzzle: why has evolution left us vulnerable to anxiety disorders?
"The evolution and biomedical implications of human deletion variants shared with archaic hominin genomes"
Omer Gokcumen
State University of New York at Buffalo