Abstract: Modern neurobiology often interprets maladaptive human behaviors as systemic or func-tional failures. From an evolutionary perspective, however, many such behaviors may reflectancestral survival strategies operating within modern environments. This paper introduces theR-Part/M-Part framework, a hierarchical model in which an impulsive survival system (R-Part)interacts with a predictive cognitive system (M-Part) to produce behavior. The frameworkexplains behavioral “mismatch” — including addiction, procrastination, artistic creation, andsocial withdrawal — as the result of neural mechanisms optimized for environments that nolonger exist. By formalizing the interaction between these systems and incorporating factorssuch as sensitivity constants, energy expenditure, and social regulation, this model provides aunified, evolutionarily-informed perspective on human action. In essence, maladaptive behav-iors are not necessarily failures, but predictable outcomes of neural architecture functioning asdesigned in an environment for which it is no longer optimized. Keywords: Evolutionary Psychology, Biological Impulse, Neural Architecture, Evolutionary Mismatch, Human Behavior, Cognitive Science, Theoretical Framework
Sivakumar et al. (Wed,) studied this question.