Beginning in the 1990s, behavioral scientists—that is, people who study
mind, brain, and behavior—began to take the theory of evolution seriously.
They began to borrow techniques developed by the evolutionary biologists
and apply them to problems in mind, brain, and behavior. Now, of
course, virtually all behavioral scientists up to that time had claimed to
endorse evolutionary theory, but few used it to study the problems they
were interested in. All that changed in the 1990s. Since that pivotal decade,
breakthroughs in the behavioral and brain sciences have been constant,
rapid, and unremitting. The purpose of the Brain, Behavior, and Evolution
series of titles published by ABC-CLIO is to bring these new breakthroughs
in the behavioral sciences to the attention of the general public.
In the past decade, some of these scientifi c breakthroughs have come
to inform the clinical and biomedical disciplines. That means that people
suffering from all kinds of diseases and disorders, particularly brain and
behavioral disorders, will benefi t from these new therapies. That is exciting
news indeed, and the general public needs to learn about these breakthrough
fi ndings and treatments. A whole new fi eld called evolutionary
medicine has begun to transform the way medicine is practiced and has
led to new treatments and new approaches to diseases, like the dementias,
sleep disorders, psychiatric diseases, and developmental disorders that
seemed intractable to previous efforts. The series of books in the Brain,
Behavior, and Evolution series seeks both to contribute to this new evolutionary
approach to brain and behavior and to bring the insights emerging
from the new evolutionary approaches to psychology, medicine, and anthropology
to the general public.