KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:
1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.
- The presentation language is English.
- If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.
Event Details
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
18 April 2024 03:00 PM (CET)
https://univienna.zoom.us/j/69686475041?pwd=NUl6V0VBOGNtb0s4a0ZWd0RhdEtOdz09
Topic description / Abstract:
How has schizophrenia, a condition that significantly reduces an individual's evolutionary fitness, remained common across generations and cultures? Numerous theories about the evolution of schizophrenia have been proposed, most of which are not consistent with modern epidemiological and genetic evidence. I will briefly review this evidence and explore the cliff edge model of schizophrenia. It suggests that schizophrenia is the extreme manifestation of a polygenic trait or a combination of traits that, within a normal range of variation, confer cognitive, linguistic, and/or social advantages. Only beyond a certain threshold, these traits precipitate the onset of schizophrenia and reduce fitness. I provide the first mathematical model of this qualitative concept and show that it requires only very weak positive selection of the underlying trait(s) to explain today’s schizophrenia prevalence. This prediction, along with expectations about the effect size of schizophrenia risk alleles, are surprisingly well matched by empirical evidence. The cliff edge model predicts a dynamic change of selection of risk alleles, which explains the contradictory findings of evolutionary genetic studies.
Biographical note:
Philipp Mitteroecker is Professor at the Dept. of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Vienna and member of the Board of Directors of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research since 2014. In 2024, he became President of the KLI. Philipp Mitteroecker is an expert in geometric morphometrics, the statistical analysis of biological form. More recently his work focuses on questions in Evolutionary Anthropology and Evolutionary Medicine.
