Quotes About Brain

the brain becomes literal when we do the flip side of empathy.10 It's painful watching a hated competitor succeed, and we activate the ACC at that time. Conversely, if he fails, we gloat, feel schadenfreude, get pleasure from his pain, and activate dopaminergic reward pathways. Forget "Your pain is my pain." Your pain is my gain.

Brain-imaging studies of drug users at that stage show that viewing a film of actors pretending to use drugs activates dopamine pathways in the brain more than does watching porn films. This

Starting with a 1979 study, low levels of serotonin in the brain were shown to be associated with elevated levels of human aggression, with end points ranging from psychological measures of hostility to overt violence.

Did destruction of the human amygdala lessen aggression? Pretty clearly so, when violence was a reflexive, inchoate outburst preceding a seizure.

these capacities evolved so recently that our brains are, if you will, winging it and improvising on the fly when dealing with metaphor. As a result, we are actually pretty lousy at distinguishing between the metaphorical and literal, at remembering that "it's only a figure of speech"—with enormous consequences for our best and worst behaviors.

Knowledge emerged about synapses, neurotransmitter-ology was born, and this idea was modified—a new memory requires the formation of a new synapse, a new connection between an axon terminal and a dendritic spine.

Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies

acute stress strengthens connectivity between the frontal cortex and motoric areas, while weakening frontal-hippocampal connections; the result is decision making that is habitual, rather than incorporating new information.

Crucially, the brain region most involved in feeling afraid and anxious is most involved in generating aggression.

Perhaps fifty years since we learned that reading problems of a type that we now call dyslexia aren't due to laziness but instead involve microscopic cortical malformations.

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

John Archer in a definitive 2006 review, "There is a weak and inconsistent association between testosterone levels and aggression in [human] adults, and … administration of testosterone to volunteers typically does not increase their aggression." The brain doesn't pay attention to fluctuations of testosterone levels within the normal range.

The evolutionarily ancient central amygdala plays a key role in innate fears. Surrounding it is the basolateral amygdala (BLA), which is more recently evolved and somewhat resembles the fancy, modern cortex. It's the BLA that learns fear and then sends the news to the central amygdala.

The sensory cortex and visual cortex are far away from each other. How do those tactile neurons "know" (a) that there's vacant property in the visual cortex; (b) that hooking up with those unoccupied neurons helps turn fingertip information into "reading"; and (c) how to send axonal projections to this new cortical continent? All are matters of ongoing research.

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,fn6,23 and she'll stop maternal behaviors, including nursing.

willpower takes metabolic power, thanks to the glucose demands of the frontal cortex. This was the finding that when people are hungry, they become less generous in economic games.

The human olfactory system is atrophied; roughly 40 percent of a rat's brain is devoted to olfactory processing, versus 3 percent in us.

It's not until the non-NMDA has been stimulated over and over by a long train of glutamate release, allowing enough sodium to flow in, that this activates the NMDA receptor. It suddenly responds to all that glutamate, opening its channels, allowing an explosion of excitation. This is the essence of learning.

when the frontal cortex labors hard on some cognitive task, immediately afterward individuals are more aggressive and less empathic, charitable, and honest.

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.

The depths of human conformity and obedience are shown by the speed with which they occur—it takes less than 200 milliseconds for your brain to register that the group has picked a different answer from yours, and less than 380 milliseconds for a profile of activation that predicts changing your opinion. Our brains are biased to get along by going along in less than a second.

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.

Thus, particularly important is a 2011 study that used transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques to temporarily inactivate the vmPFC; subjects became less likely to change their answer to conform.

THE DELAYED MATURATION of the frontal cortex suggests an obvious scenario, namely that early in adolescence the frontal cortex has fewer neurons, dendritic branches, and synapses than in adulthood, and that levels increase into the midtwenties. Instead, levels decrease.