Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

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So did the tumour cause the shooting? Not exactly, although there’s every reason to suspect that it had a large effect on his personality and the tragic outcome of his life. And in this story, a few important parts are left out, like how he joined the army to escape an abusive dad. i109947952 |b1240051900109 |dssbnf |g- |m231111 |h22 |x1 |t5 |i22 |j7 |k170509 |n07-18-2023 19:55 |o- |a612.8 |rSAP Robert Sapolsky: The biology of our best and worst selves". TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. April 2017 . Retrieved September 5, 2023. i118147572 |b1030003528318 |dcmg |g- |m |h3 |x0 |t0 |i0 |j18 |k180117 |n01-29-2022 22:09 |o- |aQP351 .S27 2017 Stress: Portrait of a Killer". Stress: Portrait of a Killer. Stanford University, National Geographic. 2008. Archived from the original on March 17, 2016 . Retrieved August 25, 2014.

Vaughan, Christopher (November 2001). "Going Wild A biologist gets in touch with his inner primate". Stanford Magazine . Retrieved March 15, 2019. If you’re anything like me then you have a thirst for knowledge and consume a lot of content, whether it be through books, audiobooks, podcasts, blog posts, keynotes, conversations or a combination of all of the aforementioned. And if you’re anything like me you wish you retained more of what you actually consumed so that you could easily recall it later, either to support your work or a conversation you are having. i109927886 |b1270001482444 |dgugnf |g- |m231120 |h19 |x2 |t2 |i8 |j300 |k170505 |n08-20-2023 20:34 |o- |a612.8 |rSap 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. In his journal he wrote: “I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.”Pilots of autonomous drones sitting oceans away still get PTSD by watching what they are doing from a far. Therefore one does not need to be personally in danger to develop PTSD. The deepest trauma is not the fear of being killed it’s doing the close-up individuated killing — watching someone for weeks and then turning him the colour of the ground. Sapolsky, Robert M. (1992). Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (Bradford Books). MIT Press. ISBN 0262193205.

First, identical twin studies have been very useful because identical twins share the same genes. So for example, if we know that when one twin gets schizophrenia, 50% of the time the other one does too, then we know that schizophrenia is 50% genetically determined.Vaughan, Christopher (November–December 2001). "Going Wild". Stanford University Magazine. Stanford University . Retrieved August 25, 2014. Ask a sociologist and they might start talking about the cultural, political and religious structures that shape people. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, wrote Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst to explore the myriad influences on human behavior. 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.

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. i110872125 |b1440002750807 |dbanf |g- |m |h12 |x2 |t2 |i3 |j70 |k170829 |n06-28-2023 18:47 |o- |a612.8 |rSAP Understanding dopamine is critical for understanding human moods and motivations. Dopamine signalling is suppressed during depression by stress chemical and during anxiety by amygdala projections. Let’s talk about some interesting details that scientists have discovered in how dopamine works. Finally we have the holy grail: Identical twins, separated at birth and adopted into different households. In 1979 Thomas Bouchard at the University of Minnesota began studying twins like this and eventually he would study over 100 pairs. They share the same genes, but different environments, so consistent similarities can be attributed to genes.i109966612 |b1060006372716 |deva |g- |m |h11 |x1 |t1 |i6 |j70 |k170511 |n06-05-2023 16:43 |o- |a612.8 |rSAP Warning for the single guys who are probably already Googling away, testosterone boosts impulsivity and risk-taking, making people do the easier thing when is the dumb-ass thing to do. 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.)