#Yale #Normal #neuroscientists #Study #Human Don’t you wish everyone would just act more normal, like you? I know I do. But normal is a relative state that depends on time, place, and circumstance. There’s no one right way to be a human, and that applies to mental as well as physical states. That’s why neuroscientists are advocating for more recognition of the bizarre normalcy of all complex humans in psychiatry—an argument that can help all of us take a bigger-picture view. A new study published in Trends in Cognitive Science on Feb. 20 debunks the myth of normalcy in people and animals. “ The Myth of Optimality in Clinical Neuroscience ” (paywall), by Avram Holmes and Lauren Patrick of the Yale University psychology department, uses evolution to show that uniformity in our brains is totally abnormal. What’s much more common in life, during its 3.5 billion years of evolving existence on Earth , is range and change, variety in and among creatures and habitats. Evolution