An evolutionary medicine perspective on pain and its disorders

Randolph M. Nesse, Jay Schulkin

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

30 Scopus citations

Abstract

Enormous progress in understanding the mechanisms that mediate pain can be augmented by an evolutionary medicine perspective on how the capacity for pain gives selective advantages, the trade-offs that shaped the mechanisms, and evolutionary explanations for the system's vulnerability to excessive and chronic pain. Syndromes of deficient pain document tragically the utility of pain to motivate escape from and avoidance of situations causing tissue damage. Much apparently excessive pain is actually normal because the cost of more pain is often vastly less than the cost of too little pain (the smoke detector principle). Vulnerability to pathological pain may be explained in part because natural selection has shaped mechanisms that respond adaptively to repeated tissue damage by decreasing the pain threshold and increasing pain salience. The other half of an evolutionary approach describes the phylogeny of pain mechanisms; the apparent independence of different kinds of pain is of special interest. Painful mental states such as anxiety, guilt and low mood may have evolved from physical pain precursors. Preliminary evidence for this is found in anatomic and genetic data. Such insights from evolutionary medicine may help in understanding vulnerability to chronic pain.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number20190288
JournalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume374
Issue number1785
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 11 2019

Keywords

  • Evolution
  • Evolutionary medicine
  • Natural selection
  • Pain

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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