Schizophrenia and human self-domestication: a linguistic approach (original) (raw)

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder entailing social and cognitive deficits, including marked problems with language. SZ incidence has always been high and quite stable in human populations, across time and regardless of cultural implications, due to unclear reasons. Also, its complex multifactorial aetiopathogenesis, including genetic and environmental factors, is widely uncertain. It has been hypothesised that SZ pathophysiology may involve the biological components that changed during the recent human evolutionary history and led to our distinctive mode of cognition, which includes language skills. In this paper we explore this possibility, focusing on the self-domestication of the human species. This has been claimed to account for many human-specific distinctive traits, including aspects of our linguistic abilities. The “domestication syndrome” in mammals comprises the constellation of traits exhibited by domesticated strains, seemingly resulting from ...