Memória adaptativa e plantas medicinais : o desempenho mnésico humano potencializado para a sobrevivência

• Autor(a) principal: SILVA, Risoneide Henriques da
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRPE
• Texto Completo: http://www.tede2.ufrpe.br:8080/tede2/handle/tede2/7269
• topic: Planta medicinal; Etnobiologia; Memória adaptativa; Psicologia evolutiva; CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::BOTANICA

Understanding how the evolution of the human naturalist mind is part of the field of interest in Evolutionary Ethnobiology has sought evidence to understand how the relationship between people and natural resources has evolved using different tools and insights from various scientific fields. In this perspective, the present work uses theoretical and methodological tools of Evolutionary Psychology and part of the theoretical scenario of adaptive memory as a key concept for the understanding of the human naturalistic mind. Considering that the human mind evolved to prioritize information relevant to survival and reproduction, in the present work we used as a model medical practices for the use of medicinal plants and an experiment was designed based on protocols of adaptive memory studies to test the hypothesis that memory adapts to the process of recall and retention of medicinal plant information. We consider as medicinal plants of greater adaptive value those destined to treat chronic diseases and infectious transmissible and as of less adaptive value those destined to treat common affections. Emerging and re-emerging diseases were used to verify a possible compliance bias and plants to treat aesthetic problems were considered as of little adaptive relevance. Our results demonstrate that medicinal plants used in the treatment of common conditions, considered of lower severity, were first remembered and retained in the participants memory. Previous experience with the disease and its frequency in the population may have acted as a trigger for its prioritization, suggesting the existence of a memory flexibility to remember this information rather than a rigid system to remind them as suggested by adaptive memory.