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Robert M. Sapolsky QUOTES

Robert M. Sapolsky QUOTES

141 " aggression, violence, compassion, empathy, sympathy, competition, cooperation, altruism, envy, schadenfreude, spite, forgiveness, reconciliation, revenge, reciprocity, and (why not?) love. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

142 " In our world riddled with male violence, the problem isn’t that testosterone can increase levels of aggression. The problem is the frequency with which we reward aggression. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

143 " it’s human behavior, human social behavior, and in many cases abnormal human social behavior. And it is indeed a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment, early experience, genes, both biological and cultural evolution, and ecological pressures, among other things. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

144 " The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) mediates the body’s response to arousing circumstances, for example, producing the famed “fight or flight” stress response. To use the feeble joke told to first-year medical students, the SNS mediates the “four Fs—fear, fight, flight, and sex.” Particular midbrain/brain-stem nuclei send long SNS projections down the spine and on to outposts throughout the body, where the axon terminals release the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

145 " THE AMYGDALAfn8 IS the archetypal limbic structure, sitting under the cortex in the temporal lobe. It is central to mediating aggression, along with other behaviors that tell us tons about aggression. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

146 " This is a central point of this book—we don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context. Because violence in the right context is different. We pay good money to watch it in a stadium, we teach our kids to fight back, we feel proud when, in creaky middle age, we manage a dirty hip-check in a weekend basketball game. Our conversations are filled with military metaphors—we rally the troops after our ideas get shot down. Our sports teams’ names celebrate violence—Warriors, Vikings, Lions, Tigers, and Bears. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

147 " Greene calls “the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality” is shown by the fact that most intergroup conflicts on our planet ultimately are cultural disagreements about whose “right” is righter. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

148 " the fetal brain generates far more neurons than are found in the adult. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

149 " Moving beyond mere correlation, if you lesion the amygdala in an animal, rates of aggression decline. The same occurs transiently when you temporarily silence the amygdala by injecting Novocain into it. Conversely, implanting electrodes that stimulate neurons there, or spritzing in excitatory neurotransmitters (stay tuned), triggers aggression.4 "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

150 " Stick recording electrodes into numerous species’ amygdalaefn9 and see when neurons there have action potentials; this turns out to be when the animal is being aggressive.fn10 In a related approach, determine which brain regions consume extra oxygen or glucose, or synthesize certain activity-related proteins, during aggression—the amygdala tops the list. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

151 " Joseph LeDoux at New York University has shown how the BLA learns fear.fn14,20 Expose a rat to an innate trigger of fear—a shock. When this “unconditioned stimulus” occurs, the central amygdala activates, stress hormones are secreted, the sympathetic nervous system mobilizes, and, as a clear end point, the rat freezes in place—“What was that? What do I do?” Now do some conditioning. Before each shock, expose the rat to a stimulus that normally does not evoke fear, such as a tone. And with repeated coupling of the tone (the conditioned stimulus) with the shock (the unconditioned one), fear conditioning occurs—the sound of the tone alone elicits freezing, stress hormone release, and so on.fn15 "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

152 " LeDoux and others have shown how auditory information about the tone stimulates BLA neurons. At first, activation of those neurons is irrelevant to the central amygdala (whose neurons are destined to activate following the shock). But with repeated coupling of tone with shock, there is remapping and those BLA neurons acquire the means to activate the central amygdala.fn16 "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

153 " Willpower is more than just a metaphor; self-control is a finite resource. Frontal neurons are expensive cells, and expensive cells are vulnerable cells. Consistent "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

154 " Success in everything from athletics to chess to the stock market boosts testosterone levels. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

155 " Logically, when the amygdala wants to mobilize a behavior—say, fleeing—it talks to the frontal cortex, seeking its executive approval. But if sufficiently aroused, the amygdala talks directly to subcortical, reflexive motor pathways. Again, there’s a trade-off—increased speed by by-passing the cortex, but decreased accuracy. Thus the input shortcut may prompt you to see the cell phone as a gun. And the output shortcut may prompt you to pull a trigger before you consciously mean to. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

156 " Infuse oxytocin into the brain of a virgin rat, and she’ll act maternally—retrieving, grooming, and licking pups. Block the actions of oxytocin in a rodent mother,*23 and she’ll stop maternal behaviors, including nursing. Oxytocin "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

157 " Thus there’s dopaminergic activation during schadenfreude—gloating over an envied person’s fall from grace. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

158 " genes and fetal environment are relevant. But most important, recall the logic of collapsing different types of trauma into a single category. What counts is the sheer number of times a child is bludgeoned by life and the number of protective factors. "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

159 " There’s support for the idea—three of my favorites are that (a) forcing depressed people to smile makes them feel better; (b) instructing people to take on a more “dominant” posture makes them feel more so (lowers stress hormone levels); and (c) muscle relaxants decrease anxiety (“Things are still awful, but if my muscles are so relaxed that I’m dribbling out of this chair, things must be improving”). Nonetheless, "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

160 " The most convincing data concern rare humans with damage restricted to the amygdala, either due to a type of encephalitis or a congenital disorder called Urbach-Wiethe disease, or where the amygdala was surgically destroyed to control severe, drug-resistant seizures originating there.5 Such individuals are impaired in detecting angry facial expressions (while being fine at recognizing other emotional states—stay tuned). "

― Robert M. Sapolsky , Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst