Adaptive memory and evolution of the human naturalistic mind: Insights from the use of medicinal plants.

ABSTRACT: Throughout evolutionary history, humans have been exposed to a wide variety of diseases, some of which have serious and even lethal consequences. Memorizing medicinal plants for the treatment of serious diseases likely maximized the chances of survival and reproduction and was instrumental in the evolutionary success of our species. In the present study, we used the idea of adaptive memory to understand whether human memory evolved to recall information about medicinal plants for the treatment of serious diseases. We considered plant-disease pairs of words as units of information available in a medical system based on the use of medicinal plants. The pairs included in the categories of chronic infectious diseases and transmissible infectious diseases were considered to be of higher adaptiv

SUBMITTER: Henriques da Silva R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6435313 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature