ReviewFrontiers in psychiatry2013
Explaining human recreational use of 'pesticides': The neurotoxin regulation model of substance use vs. the hijack model and implications for age and sex differences in drug consumption.
Review in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 66 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pharmacogenetic Variation in Neanderthals and Denisovans and Implications for Human Health and Response to Medications.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Evolutionary psychiatry: foundations, progress and challenges.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2023Article
- Is addiction a brain disease? A plea for agnosticism and heterogeneity.Psychopharmacology · 2022Review
- Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The impact of information about tobacco-related reproductive vs. general health risks on South Indian women's tobacco use decisions.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Exploring biocultural models of chewing tobacco and paan among reproductive-aged women: Self-medication, protection, or gender inequality?American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2019Article
- Sugar Addiction: From Evolution to Revolution.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Review
- Innate food aversions and culturally transmitted food taboos in pregnant women in rural southwest India: separate systems to protect the fetus?Evolution and human behavior : official journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society · 2017Article
- Evolutionary Considerations on the Emerging Subculture of the E-psychonauts and the Novel Psychoactive Substances: A Comeback to the Shamanism?Current neuropharmacology · 2017Article
- A Biocultural Investigation of Gender Differences in Tobacco Use in an Egalitarian Hunter-Gatherer Population.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2016Article
- Using Evolutionary Theory to Guide Mental Health Research.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2016Review
- The low prevalence of female smoking in the developing world: gender inequality or maternal adaptations for fetal protection?Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2016Article
- Alternative models of addiction.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2015Article
- Evolutionary and neuropsychological perspectives on addictive behaviors and addictive substances: relevance to the "food addiction" construct.Substance abuse and rehabilitation · 2014Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Most globally popular drugs are plant neurotoxins or their close chemical analogs. These compounds evolved to deter, not reward or reinforce, consumption. Moreover, they reliably activate virtually all toxin defense mechanisms, and are thus correctly identified by human neurophysiology as toxins. Acute drug toxicity must therefore play a more central role in drug use theory. We accordingly challenge the popular idea that the rewarding and reinforcing properties of drugs "hijack" the brain, and propose instead that the brain evolved to carefully regulate neurotoxin consumption to minimize fitness costs and maximize fitness benefits. This perspective provides a compelling explanation for the dramatic changes in substance use that occur during the transition from childhood to adulthood, and for pervasive sex differences in substance use: because nicotine and many other plant neurotoxins are teratogenic, children, and to a lesser extent women of childbearing age, evolved to avoid ingesting them. However, during the course of human evolution many adolescents and adults reaped net benefits from regulated intake of plant neurotoxins.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.