Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

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Sapolsky is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery. [16] aDLC |beng |erda |cDLC |dYDXCP |dBTCTA |dBDX |dOCLCF |dSFR |dFM0 |dOQX |dILC |dIK2 |dJP3 |dYDX |dTXMAL |dWIS |dVP@ |dJSY |dNYP |dXUN |dXFF |dVLR |dIUL |dOBE |dYUS |dNDS |dMZ5 |dWW9 |dUBC |dNZEPN |dYAM |dIDU |dHV6 |dWLU |dQGQ |dNLM |dZHB |dX#4 |dOCLCQ |dLCX |dOCL |dU3G |dOCLCO |dOHI |dOCLCA Robert Sapolsky: The biology of our best and worst selves". TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. April 2017 . Retrieved September 5, 2023. Naomi Eisenberger of UCLA developed a “Cyberball” study where people lie in a brain scanner while playing a virtual game. In this game, a person believes they are tossing a ball with two other people. Actually, the two other players in the game aren’t really people, they’re secretly part of the computer program. And this program is designed to mimic social exclusion.

There was another interesting twist with the monkey-raisin studies. When the scientists changed the raisin reward to only be given 50% of the time the lever is pushed, guess what happened? Far more dopamine was now released in the monkey’s brains! The reward became inconsistent, but dopamine shot through the roof. This might explain why gambling is so addictive, the gambler is only rewarded by winning once in a while, but inside their brains are being flooded with dopamine every time they make a bet or pull the slot machine lever. Hanson, E. Simon (January 5, 2001). "A Conversation With Robert Sapolsky". Brain Connection . Retrieved June 3, 2014. BC: Who were your greatest mentors? RS: Of people I've actually dealt with, ... the main person is an anthropologist/physician named Melvin Konnor ... . He ... was my advisor in college and remains a major mentor. Vaughan, Christopher (November 2001). "Going Wild A biologist gets in touch with his inner primate". Stanford Magazine . Retrieved March 15, 2019.Transcript of How I Write Conversation with Robert Sapolsky". Stanford University . Retrieved August 20, 2011. Racism, inequality, and conflict: an interview with Prof. Robert Sapolsky". Tehran Times. July 15, 2020 . Retrieved July 15, 2020. The frontal cortex, located just behind your forehead, is used for strategic decisions, long term planning, emotion regulation, impulse control, etc. A famous study found that kids who could better resist a marshmallow for 15 minutes (signalling more frontal cortex activity) got higher SAT scores years later and more general life success. Brain damage or decreased activity in this part of the brain is linked to more aggressive behavior. Image credit: Ajimonthomas via WikiMedia Commons [License: CC BY-SA 4.0] 4. Neurons and Brain Development: Why Teens Do Dumb Things But how do our cells know which sections of DNA to copy and when? It’s a different kind of protein called a transcription factor that regulates this whole process. We have about 2600 types of transcription factors in our bodies, which turn certain genes ‘on’ or ‘off’, resulting in more or less production of specific proteins. But then what controls or regulates transcription factors? The answer throws a huge wrench into genetic determinism: the environment. For example, when a mother smells her newborn child, her nose receptors send a message to the hypothalamus in the brain to activate certain transcription factors, leading to more oxytocin production, leading to milk secretion so the infant has food. This leads us to the fascinating study of Gene/Environment interactions. Sapolsky, Robert M (1990). "Stress in the Wild". Scientific American. 262 (1): 106–13. Bibcode: 1990SciAm.262a.116S. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican0190-116. JSTOR 24996650. PMID 2294581.

We’ll start by examining the “natural” causes of behavior: that is, biology and evolution. First we’ll discuss the structure of the brain and some of its major functions, then we’ll move on to how hormones influence what we do, and finally we’ll look at some behavioral patterns that have been encoded in us through countless generations of evolution. Sapolsky, Robert M. (1992). Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (Bradford Books). MIT Press. ISBN 0262193205. On the first day of August 1966, Charlie Whitman stabbed his wife and mother, then went to the top of a University of Texas tower and used a rifle to kill 17 people and wound 31 others. The strangest part of this event was that for most of his life Charlie was known as a bright and intelligent person. He had an IQ of 138, putting him into the 99th percentile. As a child, he was an eagle scout and had a newspaper route. Later working at the bank his supervisor described him as “a truly outstanding person. Very likeable. Neat. Nice looking… A great guy.” When you’re walking outside and you suddenly jump 2 feet in the air because you mistook a water hose for a snake, that’s your amygdala doing its thing. The amygdala, which consists of two small almond-shaped clusters in your brain, is crucial in making us feel fear and anxiety. Finding out there everyone disagrees with you activate something in your mind that tells you that you’re different and that being different = being wrong. The greater the activation of the circuit the greater the likelihood of changing answers to confirm. This has to do with engagement in the emotional the vmPFC.Why such a long time? Well, that’s how long it takes for a human to get at least “semi-adjusted” to whatever society they live in. Human societies contain incredibly complex rules, norms and demands. It takes no time for a squirrel to learn how to find nuts, but can take decades for a human to learn how to be a software engineer. So inside the brain, one of the neurotransmitters our neurons use to talk to each other is dopamine. There are 4 pathways in our brains that make us what scientists call the dopamine reward system. It’s what makes things feel really good and it’s why we do most actions in the first place. For example, eating food when hungry releases dopamine in the brains of most species, and so does having sex. (In fact, humans only need to think about sex to trigger dopamine release.) Dangerous people will still be arrested and—if needed—punished. Just because it’s not their “fault” doesn’t mean that dangerous people would be allowed to walk around freely. What it does mean is that justice would no longer focus on punishment, except as a means to discourage them from relapsing into their bad behavior. Instead, the focus would be on fixing whatever caused them to act that way in the first place.

It remains debatable, though, whether strict determinism is compatible with Sapolsky’s final message of hope for humanity, as he tells inspiring stories about moral heroism in history – the helicopter officer who stopped the My Lai massacre, the Christmas Day football match during the first world war. Sapolsky is on the side of Steven Pinker’s argument, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, that humanity is overall getting less violent and nasty, and points to some lessons from the “social plasticity” demonstrated in troops of baboons, one of Sapolsky’s own specialities. He thus sets himself against conservative pessimism about brutish human nature. “Anyone who says that our worst behaviours are inevitable knows too little about primates, including us.” It’s measured that younger people are more risk taking and novelty seeking than adults. Well, no surprise there. As adolescents, most of us are itching to get out of the house, we crave new stimulation in the form of music, movies, travel and other experiences. Part of this novelty seeking seems to have something to do with dopamine, but the studies are conflicted whether young people’s dopamine response is more or less sensitive than adults. Of the almost 27,000 single load Musket recovered from the field at the Battle of Gettysburg almost 24,000 of them were loaded and unfired; 12,000 loaded multiple times. In the heat of the the battle most men would load, tend to wounded soldiers, run away or wonder in a daze. Similarly in World War 2 only 15 to 20% of Rifleman ever filed their guns. When they did fire it was for their comrades, not for the cause.Ask a sociologist and they might start talking about the cultural, political and religious structures that shape people. Now let’s talk about longer-term learning and brain development. In general, as we get older, we seem to get more self control, knowledge and wisdom. So doesn’t it make sense to assume that our brains get larger or grow over time? Nope, we actually have more neurons in early adolescence, then it’s all downhill from there. Well, not exactly. However, while scientists have found it hard to isolate the effects of any single genes, it is possible to study the effects of our genes in general. And the genes we inherit strongly affect many parts of us, including personality traits like IQ, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and our risk for depression, autism, gambling, alcoholism and schizophrenia. Scientists have found genes influence even obscure personal quirks like political involvement and texting frequency among teenagers. But how can scientists isolate the effects of genes vs. environment, nature vs. nurture? Liberals believe that our best days are ahead of us where is conservatives view our best days is behind us. (‘make America great again’) Increasing cognitive word makes liberals more conservative. The time pressure of snap judgements is a version of increased cognitive load. Likewise people become more conservative when tired in pain or distracted with a cognitive task or when blood alcohol levels rise.

i118051477 |b1030003323514 |dcml |g- |m |h2 |x0 |t0 |i3 |j18 |k180103 |n12-10-2021 18:20 |o- |aQP351 .S27 2017 So the prefrontal cortex, which is all about long term planning and delaying gratification, seems to play a large role in life success. But don’t worry, it’s not just a genetic talent. These researchers found that some kids were better at resisting the marshmallow because they used better mental strategies, like thinking about something else or putting a frame around the marshmallow (pretending it was a picture rather than a real marshmallow). And teaching these strategies to other kids boosted their willpower too.Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, up, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Culture is on the list of explanatory factors for behaviour. Sapolsky, Robert (2010). Stress and Your Body. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company. ISBN 978-1-59803-680-0. . a b Brown, Patricia Leigh (April 19, 2001). "AT HOME WITH: DR. ROBERT M. SAPOLSKY; Family Man With a Foot In the Veld". The New York Times . Retrieved August 25, 2014.