Neurodivergence is an evolutionary advantage?

[Village Weirdo]

Hello All,

First time here and I have no evidence for this thought, it's all ideation. 

What if neurodivergence is an evolutionary advantage? Let's not even talk about people, because that is so complex that I have little confidence I could address all of the possibilities that humans entail. But let's take non human species. What if neurodivergence is a mechanism to allow a species to thrive in specific environments but then explore others through the creation of a small subset of neurodivergent individuals. This probably often leads to failure or death, but in the event that a neurodivergent individual within a species comes across some better method of survival then those individuals will thrive, and lead to the potential creation of a new species or the same species in a different place that adapts to that place.

Edited October 7 by Village Weirdo

[Phi for All]

16 minutes ago, Village Weirdo said:

Let's not even talk about people,

Sorry, neurodivergence defines human neurocognitive functions only. But your idea is valid when talking about people, so by all means let's talk about people.

[sethoflagos]

17 minutes ago, Village Weirdo said:

... What if neurodivergence is a mechanism to allow a species to thrive in specific environments but then explore others through the creation of a small subset of neurodivergent individuals...

You might like to have a look at "The emergence of a collective sensory response threshold in ant colonies" Gal & Kronauer, PNAS, 2022

Quote

Conclusion

Our results provide a simple, tractable example of a collective perception–action loop, where social dynamics are used to integrate the sensory perception of individual ants and to produce a coherent collective response. We show that under borderline conditions, individual ants suppress their own assessment or perception of sensory information about the external environment in favor of a collective decision. Moreover, the social dynamics enable the colony to integrate information not only about the external environment, but also about the state of the colony itself (its size in this case). The collective outcome is therefore more than a mere average of the “opinions” of the individual ants.

Our modeling results also highlight the importance of heterogeneity in social groups. This group-level property is thought to contribute to a group’s ability to adapt to changing conditions in systems ranging from insect colonies to human societies (58–60).

 

[Phi for All]

I've often wondered if divergence isn't a natural response to the many dichotomies present in modern societies. When everyone is telling you that your society is all about freedom, yet you experience the opposite, divergence from the norm seems like a reasonable response.

[Village Weirdo]

Okay, can of worms opened.

I feel like if that was the case, we wouldn't be able to reference our animal brains affecting us in specific ways. It seems to me that the human brain hasn't evolved for a very long time, civilization has, but not humans. What has changed is the environment we are subjected to. A person from the 1100s would be stumped by a refrigerator, but any child that's raised now thinks a refrigerator is perfectly normal, they may not understand how it works, but they know it's how everyone keeps their food cold to avoid spoilage. If a child born in the 1100s has the same brain evoluationarily as a child born now, then the key difference is the environment that the child is raised in. I don't see why this idea couldn't extend back even further to pre-human organisms. I suspect the plasticity of the human brain is what allows any child to understand their surroundings no matter how different they were from their ancestors' perspective.

[CharonY]

IMO terms like neurodivergence is not a biological term, at best it is medical. It assumes some sort of normative functions and considers sufficiently large differences as divergent, unless I am mistaken. As such, it is based on an assumption of normalcy. These are common in social and medical contexts, but in biology we would even consider detrimental traits as part of the overall existing biological variation.

 

 

[Village Weirdo]

So because it hasn't been defined as an applicable term by humanity it is impossible and therefore not worth ideation?

[CharonY]

22 minutes ago, Village Weirdo said:

So because it hasn't been defined as an applicable term by humanity it is impossible and therefore not worth ideation?

Not as a biological concept. Also, I would like to see a better characterization- the term neurodivergent  can be used broadly (as I did) or medically, which assumes some impairment of functions in current societal contexts. Again, not applicable to biology (and so are the examples give in this thread). Unless you can define the traits of a, say neurodivergent bird (what would be a "normal" bird in this context?), we cannot really start a biological discussion.

[Village Weirdo]

I would basically attribute any neurodivergent traits of the word we use neurodivergence for humans. So I imagine that maybe an ADHD bird exists that might have more energy consumption to power faster processing speeds in the brain. This bird would probably appear to be an almost erratic version of it's species. One of my speculations is that all of the finches from Charles Darwin may have been neurodivergent individuals. Who all obtained some significant way to obtain energy that was different from the typical finch they came from and then proliferated and the next generation was taught how to obtain energy this new way. Which would probably show progress as the neurotypical finches improved and interated upon the basic idea that the ADHD finch found. So essentially a form of evolution through the development of a habit rather than one that manifested through a change to the shape of the creature. Crows seem similar to me, so now I'm wondering if crows tool usage can be traced back to those finches or some other animal that got tool usage from a neurodivergent variant. Then I wonder if there are any other species that would seemingly have this "evolutionary habit" or spread, but in a similar fashion to this as opposed to say I grew a new toe and that allowed me to do something better.

[Village Weirdo]

I will also continue to post more about this until I am told to stop or it feels like someone has found a true fault such that my entire hypothesis breaks down. Hypothesis will be coming soon, I have thoughts faster than I could verbalize or type them, so it's going to be a bit chaotic. Thanks for listening and debating.

[Harrot]

Diversity is an evolutionary advantage... or not.

In biology, the great principles expressed in words are not so great.

The reality is much more subtle: here, for example, too much diversity will be a handicap, particularly when the environment remains unchanged, depending on the quantity of individuals that can be lost in the reproductive chain, depending on the loss of resources per lost individual, depending on the growth rate of individuals, depending on the resources available, depending on extraspecific competition, depending on the ability to survive with low diversity, depending on the reproductive method, depending on the migration of alleles from the population, etc. There is therefore no answer that can be given solely on the basis of diversity.

The complexity of interactions makes long-term calculations virtually impossible, even with simple life forms.

With humans, it gets trickier because there's also feedback on biology through technology, the social part and civilization, which add even more complexity.

There was a time when strange peoples were simply killed because they were too different, sometimes they simply made others jealous,... but is this an advantage when it comes to having children? Isn't the biological ability to have more children more effective at duplicating certain genetic traits than being neurodivergent?

 

 

[iNow]

One of the problems with this thread is the broad all encompassing use of the word divergent.

Divergence includes a vast category of traits and characteristics. Some of those traits might help increase the likelihood of successful reproduction while others of those traits might hinder the ability to secure mates and reproduce.

Details matter and you may as well be asking whether detached dangling earlobes are an evolutionary advantage. 

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

“Neurodivergent” is rather vague, since it’s not some binary condition (i.e. a number of ways to be atypical) and with a simplistic answer of “it depends on the environment” just like with any trait.

Without a narrower definition to focus this, I don’t see that there’s much real discussion to be had