CAS behavior

Summary

Behave

The Behavior

• What happened one second before - must be driven by the nervous system. 
  
• What happened in the prior seconds to minutes that triggered the nervous system to generate the behavior - is driven by sensory stimuli
  
• What happened in the prior hours to days that altered the sensitivity of the nervous system to the stimuli - is the impact of hormones are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors.  The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. 
  
  
• Long term potentiation (LTP) is the increasing excitability of a neural connection which persists over time.  It:
  • Includes a mechanism in the hippocampus that leverages the architecture of NMDA channels.  Sapolsky explains "that when NMDA receptors finally activate and open their channels, it is calcium, rather than sodium, that flows in.  This causes an array of changes; here are a few:
  • The calcium tidal wave causes more copies of glutamate receptors to be inserted into the dendritic spin's membrane, making the neuron more responsive to glutamate thereafter. 
    
  • The calcium also alters glutamate receptors that are already on the front lines of that dendritic spine; each will now be more sensitive to glutamate signals.
  • The calcium also causes the synthesis of peculiar neurotransmitters in the dendritic spine, which are released and travel backward across the synapse; there they increase the amount of glutamate released from the axon terminal after future action potentials."  
  • Spine number and branch length in the hippocampus and frontal cortex are increased by estrogen. 
    
  • Is affected by stress hormones: glucocorticoids; which act differently on the hippocampus & amygdala and
    
  • Initially promote hippocampal LTP but under sustained conditions disrupt LTP and promote LTD.  
  • Under sustained conditions in the amygdala increases BDNF levels and expands dendrites in the BLA & BNST.  
  • Must further persist beyond the life of a particular synapse.  Additional mechanisms ensure this happens over days, months and years.   
  • Is also implemented by new synapse formation based strategies.  Calcium flowing into the spine diffuses and triggers the formation of a new spine near the current LTP.  
  • Occurs throughout the neuronal network:
  • Fear conditioning leverages synaptic LTP in the BLA.  
  • Dopamine networks use it to associate stimuli with rewards. 
    
  of neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors.  Neurons are supported by glial cells.  Neurons include a:
  • Receptive element - dendrites
    
  • Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals
    
  • Highly variable DNA schema using transposons. 
    
  & other forms of neuroplasticity is lasting change to the brain that occurs throughout life.  It is also termed neural plasticity.  The changes include:
  • The strength of dendritic input alters due to genetic, neural and hormonal signals
  • Hebb notes that memories require strengthening of preexisting synapses.  Glutamate responsive neurons' post synaptic dendritic spines have two types of receptor: non-NMDA and NMDA.  NMDA channels are responsible for this strengthening mechanism.  LTP then occurs to prolong the increase in excitability of the synapse. 
    
  • The LTP operation results in calcium diffusion which triggers new spine formation in adjacent parts of the dendrite.  Eventually that can stimulate dentrite growth enabling more neurons to connect. 
    
  • Short term stress promotes hippocampal LTP.  
  • Sustained stress promotes:
    
  • Hippocampal & frontal cortex  LTD & suppresses LTP.  Subsequent reductions in NCAM then reduce dendrite and synapse density. 
    
  • Amygdala LTP and suppresses LTD boosting fear conditioning.  It increases BDNF levels and expands dendrites in the BLA. 
    
  • Depression and anxiety reduce hippocampal dendrite and spine number by reducing BDNF. 
    
  • The axon's conditions for
    
  • Initiating an action potential. 
    
  • Progesterone boosts GABA-ergic neurons response to GABA decreasing the excitability of other neurons over a period of hours. 
    
  • Duration of a neuron's refractory period.  Testosterone shortens the refractory period of amygdala and amygdala target neurons over a period of hours. 
    
  • Synaptic connections being constantly removed and recreated
  • Synapses being created or destroyed.  Stimulation generates additional dendritic spines which become associated with a nearby axon terminal and within weeks a synapse forms.  The synapse then contributes calcium diffusion through LTP triggering more spine formation.  When dendritic spines recede synapses disappear. 
    
  • Cortical maps change to reflect alterations in the inputs and outputs from the body. 
    
  • Birth of brain cells in many areas of adult brains: the hippocampus (where 3% are replaced each month) and olfactory bulb and lesser amounts in the cortex. 
    
  • Restructuring after brain damage including axonal plasticity.  Distant rerouting of axons is observed but no mechanism has been identified yet. 
    
  • Vision is plastic in predators, where the eyes are moved during final development.  Dehaene argues for neuronal recycling supporting reading.  
  occurring over prior days to months. 
  
• Cascading back through adolescence and childhood to the genome and evolutionary pressures occurring over the prior millions of years that supported the development of different cultures.  

• On a continuum with other species, but in unique contexts, our evolved architecture seeks to identify us from them!  And to make us favor in-group people who are close in hierarchic rank to us.  
• Uniquely human - nature of moral decisions.  
• Associated with capabilities we share with animals such as feeling pain, which helps us develop empathy is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective.  It is implemented by spindle neurons.  It is context dependently mediated by estrogen.  It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them.  In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC.  If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured.  The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help.  But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC.  In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures.  Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people.  By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala.  Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do.  But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is.  Sociopaths do not develop empathy.   - but Sapolsky asks who does it benefit? 
  
• Driven by language including metaphorical
  The agents in complex adaptive systems (CAS) must model their environment to respond effectively to it.  Samuel modeling is described as an approach. 
  
  models: pain, disgust; but they are bound to visceral signals.  
• Nonsensical - free will is the subjective assessment of one's ability to make decisions and perform independent actions.  Philosophers note that causal chains linking physical phenomena with conscious decisions would undermine the idea of independent free will.  RSS views the architecture of CAS agency as requiring indirect associations between phenomena and agent's models.  Evolution captures these associations within the genetic structures of the emergent agents, removing any epistemological or complementarity constraints.  Sapolsky concludes that this evolved agency severely limits the potential contribution of free will. 
  and the criminal justice system
  
• Improving with time: Fewer awful acts are committed today making the world safer. 
  

• In different scientific silos the terms mean different things. 
  
• Ideology also generates a definitional quagmire.  
• The terms that anchor this book are difficult to define because they are profoundly context dependent.  So Sapolsky looks at the complex adaptive system (
  This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory frame.  The theory is positioned relative to the natural sciences.  It catalogs the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems that are based on the interaction of emergent agents. 
  John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined.  Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented. 
  
  CAS) biology of both our best AND worst behaviors across the integrated temporal, spatial and cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex adaptive system (CAS).  Small world and scale free networks are considered. 
  
  network. 
  

One Second Before

• The limbic system supports emotional circuits: Amygdala, Hippocampus, Septum, Habenula, Mammillary bodies; all of which signals the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The broad interconnections of these regions with a part of the frontal lobe suggested to Walle Nauta that it (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) is a quasi-member of the limbic network.   is layer 2 of the triune
  The agents in complex adaptive systems (CAS) must model their environment to respond effectively to it.  Samuel modeling is described as an approach. 
  
  model, a focus of the emotions of our best and worst behaviors.  It processes the important sensory stimuli: smell for rats, vision for primates; with complex, M. Mitchell Waldrop describes a vision of complexity via:
  
  • Rich interactions that allow a system to undergo spontaneous self-organization
  • Systems that are adaptive
    
  • More predictability than chaotic systems by bringing order and chaos into
    
  • Balance at the edge of chaos
  excitatory & inhibitory circuits, a network of interconnected neurons which perform signalling, modeling and control functions.  In Cajal's basic neural circuits the signalling is unidirectional.  He identified three classes of neurons in the circuits:
  • Sensory, Interneurons, Motor; which are biochemically distinct and suffer different disease states. 
    
  .  
• It interfaces to layer 1 regulatory aspects of the autonomic nervous system through the hypothalamus is essential to many operations of the body.  It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, and similar body operations.  Its (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)->  amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus).  .  The autonomic nervous system supports both fight/flight and calm.  The hypothalamus also regulates the release of hormones are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors.  The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. 
  .  And these state changes feed back to the brain influencing behavior.  
• It interfaces to layer 3 of the triune brain
• The cortex includes the paleocortex a thin sheet of cells that mostly process smell, archicortex and the neocortex.  The cerebral cortex is a pair of large folded sheets of brain tissue, one on either side of the top of the head connected by the corpus callosum.  It includes the occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal lobes.   is layer 3 of the triune model.  Most sensory signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance.  In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively.  A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form.  Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell.  Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state.  Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals.  Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich.  Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors.  In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation.  To be credible signals must be hard to fake.  To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient.  To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. 
  flow there to be interpreted.  It supports thought.  But Sapolsky emphasizes its models are tightly influenced by the emotional signals projected in through the frontal cortex of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain.  It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex.  Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do.  The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task.  It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success.  It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower.  The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information.  The frontal cortex tracks rules.  Over a lifetime that builds into a costly activity.  Once it tires responses become less prosocial.  But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum.  The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations.  The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies.  The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation.  It does not complete development until the mid-20s.  It includes spindle neurons.  It is easily damaged.  Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system. 
  and back to the limbic areas. 
  

The Amygdala

The Frontal Cortex

• Antecedent strategies work by thinking about something else or reappraising the emotion as unreal with the aim of activating the dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
  • At the heart of decision making - highly rational, unsentimental 
  • A major agent of working memory
    
  • The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.  
  • Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.  
  to dampen the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  and sympathetic nervous system.  Placebos use antecedent reappraisal to stimulate the dlPFC which then inhibits the amygdala's pain response. 
  work this way.  And this mechanism is leveraged in CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy.  It was originally designed to treat depression.  CBT leverages cognitive and behavioral principles to cope with behaviors, induced by prior conditioning, which cannot be managed directly with rational thoughts.  Instead it assumes that one's relationship with maladaptive thinking and emotional bindings can be changed through antecedent strategies.  CBT is problem focused and action oriented.  Errors in thinking like: overgeneralizing, magnifying negatives, minimizing positives and catastrophizing are replaced with more realistic and effective thoughts.  . 
  
• Response-focused strategies where you aim to cope with the emotions after they start occurring by thinking about sitting still and breathing deeply.  Sapolsky argues this is not very effective since it increases the activity of the amygdala. 
  

The Mesolimbic/Mesocortical Dopamine System

• Mesolimbic pathway includes projections between the tegmentum and the accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus;
  to the accumbens is a region of the basal forebrain rostral to the preoptic area and immediately adjacent to the septum.  The nucleus accumbens was closely associated with the limbic system and plays an important role in reinforcement.  If a rodent wins a fight on his home territory, there are long-lasting increases in levels of testosterone receptors enhancing pleasurable effects.  When prairie voles first mate, epi-genetic state changes are induced in the accumbens to support pair-bonding.  The accumbens projects to brain regions associated with movement.  The major pathways of dopaminergic neurons begin in the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area.  The amygdala projects back to the accumbens.  The tegmentostriatal system begins in the ventral tegmental area and projects to the nucleus accumbens.  The nucleus accumbens includes high levels of D1, D2 and D3 dopamine receptors located on the spine & shafts of dendrites of excitatory cells reduce the transfer of excitation from the dendrites to the cell bodies, so only especially strong excitatory inputs get through to the cell body to elicit excitation.  It also has D4 dopamine receptors which are highly variable.  The accumbens responds differently to rewards depending on maturity: In juveniles all reward levels result in the same response activity level, During adolescence the accumbens responds to small rewards negatively, and large rewards hugely, In adults the rewards result in measured scaled positive responses.  Chronic stress depletes dopamine from the nucleus accumbens biasing humans towards depression.  , amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  & hippocampus is a part of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory.  Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation.  The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle.  Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information.  During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation.  It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new memories.  The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point.  Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits.  It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky.  Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy.  He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. 
  . The accumbens projects onto areas associated with movement. 
  
• Mesocortical pathway includes projections between the tegmentum and the prefrontal cortex;
  specifically targeting the prefrontal cortex.  
• Major return pathways from the amygdala and prefrontal cortex project to the tegmentum & accumbens. 
  

• Punishing norm violations is rewarded
• Social domination is rewarded
• When someone who is envied gets hurt there is a dopamine reward. 
  
• Habituation in the tegmentum is involved in homeostatic and reflex pathways in the brain.  It includes: ventral; areas.  It forms the base of the midbrain.  It projects via the: mesolimbic dopamine pathway to limbic structures, mesocortical dopamine pathway to the prefrontal cortex.  Sapolsky explains that Wolfram Schultz demonstrated that following a reward, the dopamine system codes for discrepancy from expectation--get what you expected, and there's a steady-state dribble of dopamine.  Get more reward and/or get it sooner than expected, and there's a big burst; less and or later a decrease.  Some tegmental neurons respond to positive discrepancy from expectation, others to negative; appropriately, the latter are local neurons that release inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA.  Those same neurons participate in habituation, where the reward that once elicited a big dopamine response becomes less exciting.  These coding neurons get projections from the frontal cortex where the expectancy/discrepancy calculations occur. 
  enables dopamine to reward a vast range of activities through
  Rather than oppose the direct thrust of some environmental flow agents can improve their effectiveness with indirect responses.  This page explains how agents are architected to do this and discusses some examples of how it can be done. 
  
  indirect relative assessment of outcomes by the prefrontal cortex. 
  

The Anticipation of Reward

A Final Small Topic: Serotonin

Seconds to minutes before

• What outside stimulus, acting through what sensory channel and targeting which parts of the brain, prompted this behavior?
• Were you aware of that environmental stimulus?
• What stimuli had your brain made you particularly sensitive to?
• What does this tell us about our best and worst behaviors?

1. Amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
   
   • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
   • Participates in disgust
   • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
     
   • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
     
   • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
     
   • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
     
   • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
     
   • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
     
   activation and more so in someone who tests positive for race bias
2. Fusiform is a region of the brain which supports advanced mechanisms of shape recognition and implements the early stages of reading.  Subliminal priming with words did not depend on the shape of the word.  The fusiform gyrus was able to process the abstract identity of a word without caring if it was upper or lower case.   While high up in the cortex it can operate below the level of conscious experience.  It contributes to social emotions with:
   
   • Its face area being more activated by faces with in-group skin color.  
   • It activating when shown pictures of cars in automobile aficionados. 
     
   • It activating when shown pictures of birds in birdwatchers; since it really recognizes examples of items from an individual's emotionally salient categories. 
     
   face area is less activated by other-race faces. 
   

• Inhaled sweat produced while terrified is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. 
  causes activation of the amygdala, increased startle response and improved detection of subliminal angry is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. 
  faces.  When people around you smell scared is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. 
  your brain will be more likely to become scared too. 
• Smelling garbage makes people more conservative about social issues. 
  

Hours to days before

The endocrinology of Aggression in females

• Ratios of estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently.  Estrogen:
  • Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state.  There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects.  The levels of each type of receptor is independently regulated.  Different receptor variants are associated with:
  • Higher rates of anxiety among women
  • Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
  to progesterone is a steroid hormone.  It:
  • Rarely directly effects areas of the brain.  Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas. 
    
  • Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions.  However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety.  It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA. 
    
  are more causally significant than absolute amounts.  That effect is hard to mechanize.  
• Huge fluctuations occur over periods of hours, especially in women during ovulation and childbirth.  That makes useful experiments tough to construct.  
• Different species vary in how this opperates. 
  
• Progesterone is mostly converted to other signals that have receptors in different brain regions.  The various hormones generically termed estrogens all act slightly differently.  
• Females are sometimes aggressive anyway. 
  

Maternal Aggression

• Rats, during late pregnancy, estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently.  Estrogen:
  • Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state.  There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects.  The levels of each type of receptor is independently regulated.  Different receptor variants are associated with:
  • Higher rates of anxiety among women
  • Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
  & progesterone is a steroid hormone.  It:
  • Rarely directly effects areas of the brain.  Instead it is converted into other sterioids which have different actions in different brain areas. 
    
  • Increases maternal aggression in concert with estrogen by increasing oxytocin release in certain brain regions.  However, on its own progresterone decreases aggression and anxiety.  It decreases anxiety by entering neurons where it is converted to allopregnanolone which binds to GABA receptors increasing their sensitivity to GABA. 
    
  increase maternal aggression supports protection of newborns especially in breeds with high risks of infanticide.  During late pregnancy, estrogen and progesterone increase maternal aggression by increasing oxytocin release in the brain.  This outcome reflects the specific late pregnancy brain state and presence of both estrogen and progesterone. 
  by increasing oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else.  The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening outgroup.  Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions.  It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking.  Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them.  It is associated with pair bonding.  It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child.  Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin.  Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces.  Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy.  And another receptor gene variant which is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships.  Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants.  Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior.  Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning.  Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. 
  release in regions of the brain.  Two different estrogen receptors, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal.  When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure.  In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel.  The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. 
  help allow estrogen to increase maternal aggression or reduce aggression and enhance empathy is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective.  It is implemented by spindle neurons.  It is context dependently mediated by estrogen.  It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them.  In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC.  If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured.  The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help.  But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC.  In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures.  Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people.  By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala.  Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do.  But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is.  Sociopaths do not develop empathy.   and emotional recognition.  The receptor levels are independently regulated allowing the brain to be configured differently and so respond to the same hormone are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors.  The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. 
  signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance.  In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively.  A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form.  Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell.  Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state.  Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals.  Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich.  Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors.  In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation.  To be credible signals must be hard to fake.  To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient.  To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. 
  in different ways depending on longer-term context.  Progesterone alone decreases aggression and anxiety.  

Bare-Knuckled Female Aggression

• Female brains have their own
  This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).  The mechanism and its emergence are discussed. 
  
  evolved distribution of androgen are a class of steroid hormones including testosterone, androstenedione and dihydrotestosterone.  They are precursors of estrogens. 
  receptors , in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal.  When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure.  In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel.  The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. 
  
• Female aggression can be used strategically to improve niche control: Capture resources including nesting space & food, Stress competitors into infertility,  Chimps kill competing infants, Compete for paternal males; and
  
• In some species: Hyenas; females are dominant and more aggressive than the males; Sapolsky concludes that androgens can help make females aggressive but it undermines maternal processes resulting in evolved compromises. 
  

Perimenstrual aggression and irritability

Stress and imprudent brain function

• Signals the brain-stem includes: medulla, raphe, pons, substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, pituitary, superior colliculi, cerebellum, thalamus (LGN), basal ganglia including caudate nucleus and striatum; amygdala, hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens; to switch over to the sympathetic nervous system releasing epinephrine & norepinephrine. 
• Mediates the PVN is a part of the hypothalamus which projects to the pituitary secreting:
  
  • CRH which triggers the pituatory to release ACTH.  
  • Oxytocin
    
  • Vasopressin
    
  which causes glucocorticoid are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  release; postponing long term activities and turning on
  Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents.  This page discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
  It then presents examples of agents in different CAS.  The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents.  These software agents are aggregates. 
  The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined. 
  
  agents that will help cope with the immediate threat.  Perfect responses for a zebra or lion.  But not for recently evolved primates who can get stressed just by thinking about a stressful event.  The stress response remains on for problematically long periods, altering judgment, executive function and sociality is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  . 
  

Some important debunking: Alcohol

Days to Months Before

• LTP is long term potentiation which is the increasing excitability of a neural connection which persists over time.  It: 
  • Includes a mechanism in the hippocampus that leverages the architecture of NMDA channels.  Sapolsky explains "that when NMDA receptors finally activate and open their channels, it is calcium, rather than sodium, that flows in.  This causes an array of changes; here are a few:
  • The calcium tidal wave causes more copies of glutamate receptors to be inserted into the dendritic spin's membrane, making the neuron more responsive to glutamate thereafter. 
    
  • The calcium also alters glutamate receptors that are already on the front lines of that dendritic spine; each will now be more sensitive to glutamate signals.
  • The calcium also causes the synthesis of peculiar neurotransmitters in the dendritic spine, which are released and travel backward across the synapse; there they increase the amount of glutamate released from the axon terminal after future action potentials."  
  • Spine number and branch length in the hippocampus and frontal cortex are increased by estrogen. 
    
  • Is affected by stress hormones: glucocorticoids; which act differently on the hippocampus & amygdala and
    
  • Initially promote hippocampal LTP but under sustained conditions disrupt LTP and promote LTD.  
  • Under sustained conditions in the amygdala increases BDNF levels and expands dendrites in the BLA & BNST.  
  • Must further persist beyond the life of a particular synapse.  Additional mechanisms ensure this happens over days, months and years.   
  • Is also implemented by new synapse formation based strategies.  Calcium flowing into the spine diffuses and triggers the formation of a new spine near the current LTP.  
  • Occurs throughout the neuronal network:
  • Fear conditioning leverages synaptic LTP in the BLA.  
  • Dopamine networks use it to associate stimuli with rewards. 
    
  of NMDA calcium channels is a synaptic channel which is sensitive to voltage and to the signals glutamate and its relative N-methyl-D-aspartate.  It rarely opens to glutamate unless the membrane potential becomes less negative than at rest.  That may be due to the action of other receptors nearby.  When the channel opens it allows in calcium ions which alter the strength of the synapse for days, weeks, months or longer.  That may be the basis of a form of memory.  If NMDA channels are chemically inactivated in a rat's hippocampus, the rat cannot remember where it has been.   mediating neurons, specialized eukaryotic cells include channels which control flows of sodium and potassium ions across the massively extended cell membrane supporting an electro-chemical wave which is then converted into an outgoing chemical signal transmission from synapses which target nearby neuron or muscle cell receptors.  Neurons are supported by glial cells.  Neurons include a:
  • Receptive element - dendrites
    
  • Transmitting element - axon and synaptic terminals
    
  • Highly variable DNA schema using transposons. 
    
  learning in the: hippocampus is a part of the brain involved in the temporary storage or coding of long-term episodic memory.  Memory formation in the cells of the hippocampus uses the MAP kinase signalling network which is impacted by sleep deprivation.  The hippocampus dependent memory system is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle.  Increased acetylcholine during REM sleep promotes information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information.  During slow-wave sleep low levels of acetylcholine cause the release of the suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in memory consolidation.  It was initially associated with memory formation by McGill University's Dr. Brenda Milner, via studies of 'HM' Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobes had been surgically destroyed leaving him unable to create new memories.  The size of neurons' dendritic trees expands and contracts over a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the peak in size and cognitive skills at the estrogen high point.  Adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus (3% of neurons are replaced each month) where the new neurons integrate into preexisting circuits.  It is enhanced by learning, exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, environmental enrichment, and brain injury and inhibited by various stressors explains Sapolsky.  Prolonged stress makes the hippocampus atrophy.  He notes the new neurons are essential for integrating new information into preexisting schemas -- learning that two things you thought were the same are actually different. 
  , BLA is the basolateral amygdala, a relatively recently evolved part of the amygdala which learns stimuli to fear and then signals the central amygdala.  It recieves inputs from all sensory networks.  Some are fast pathways that allow the BLA to detect and respond when the sensory cortex is unaware.  But it is far less accurate than the cortex.  The BLA's learning involves increased excitability of synapses coupling the BLA and central amygdala.  This is due to gene driven: Increased levels of growth factors promoting new connections, more receptors for excitatory neurotransmitters in dendritic spines.  The BLA also responds to signals from the frontal cortex that a stimulus no longer appears frightening.  This subset of BLA cells respond inhibiting the associating subset.  Stress and glucocorticoids increase levels of CRH and BDNF encouraging the building of new dendrites and synapses. 
  , Frontal cortex of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain.  It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex.  Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do.  The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task.  It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success.  It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower.  The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information.  The frontal cortex tracks rules.  Over a lifetime that builds into a costly activity.  Once it tires responses become less prosocial.  But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum.  The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations.  The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies.  The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation.  It does not complete development until the mid-20s.  It includes spindle neurons.  It is easily damaged.  Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system. 
  , Dopaminergic networks are categorized anatomically into three key types:
  • Ultra-short systems,
    
  • Intermediate length systems,
    
  • Long systems. 
    
  association of a stimulus and a reward; that Sapolsky is interested in. 
• LTD is long term depression which is an experience dependent, long-term decrease in synaptic excitability.  It: 
  • Sharpens a signal by erasing what's extraneous comments Sapolsky. 
    
  provides compensation for LTP and can enhance it by removing any extraneous signal rather than forgetting the LTP.   And
  
• Moderate stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  promotes hippocampal LTP while sustained stress disrupts hippocampal, and frontal cortex, LTP and promotes LTD.  In the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  sustained stress and glucocorticoids are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  enhance LTP and suppress LTD resulting in enhanced fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. 
  conditioning. 
• Against the wishes of the establishment figures of neuroscience, adult brains make new neurons.  Sapolsky wonders why there was so much push back. 
  

• Synapses, a neuron structure which provides a junction with other neurons.  It generates signal molecules, either excitatory or inhibitory, which are kept in vesicles until the synapse is stimulated when the signal molecules are released across the synaptic cleft from the neuron.  The provisioning of synapses is under genetic control and is part of long term memory formation as identified by Eric Kandel.  Modulation signals (from slow receptors) initiate the synaptic strengthening which occurs in memory. 
  are created as well as strengthened throughout the brain.  LTP generates a wave of calcium which enables "activity-dependent synaptogenesis." 
• As more synapses form the dendritic tree expands allowing for more neurons to connect.  Moderate stress increases dendritic spine numbers in the hippocampus. 
  
• Sustained stress and glucocorticoids reduce dendritic spines in the hippocampus.  And they cause dendritic retraction, synapse loss, less synapse stabilizing NCAM is neural cell adhesion molecule which stabilizes synapses.  , and less glutamate release into the frontal cortex.  These changes correspond to attentional and decision-making impairments.  The nucleus accumbens is a region of the basal forebrain rostral to the preoptic area and immediately adjacent to the septum.  The nucleus accumbens was closely associated with the limbic system and plays an important role in reinforcement.  If a rodent wins a fight on his home territory, there are long-lasting increases in levels of testosterone receptors enhancing pleasurable effects.  When prairie voles first mate, epi-genetic state changes are induced in the accumbens to support pair-bonding.  The accumbens projects to brain regions associated with movement.  The major pathways of dopaminergic neurons begin in the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area.  The amygdala projects back to the accumbens.  The tegmentostriatal system begins in the ventral tegmental area and projects to the nucleus accumbens.  The nucleus accumbens includes high levels of D1, D2 and D3 dopamine receptors located on the spine & shafts of dendrites of excitatory cells reduce the transfer of excitation from the dendrites to the cell bodies, so only especially strong excitatory inputs get through to the cell body to elicit excitation.  It also has D4 dopamine receptors which are highly variable.  The accumbens responds differently to rewards depending on maturity: In juveniles all reward levels result in the same response activity level, During adolescence the accumbens responds to small rewards negatively, and large rewards hugely, In adults the rewards result in measured scaled positive responses.  Chronic stress depletes dopamine from the nucleus accumbens biasing humans towards depression.   becomes depleted of dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward.  Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP).  The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly.  The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor.  Dopamine signalling:
  
  • Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli.  So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate.  GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. 
    
  • Reflects the anticipation of reward.  It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward.  Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity.  That explains context dependent cravings.  And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding.  The accumbens supports willpower.  And dopamine
    
  • Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex.  That makes dopamine central to:
    
  • Motivation.  This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.  
  • The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards.  To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens).  Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing.  Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.  
  • Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
    
  • The receptor D4's gene shows high variability.  The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.  
  • Dopamine is degraded by COMT.  The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.  
  • Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT. 
    
  , biasing rats to social subordination.  The same depletion causes humans to become depressed is a debilitating state which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels; and an accumulation of traumatic events.  There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015).  The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure.  Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past.  It affects 12% of men and 20% of women.  It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016).  Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression.  Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease.   It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016).  During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling.  There is an association between depression and particular brain regions: Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Abnormalities of the ACC.  Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable.  Treatments include: CBT, UMHS depression management.  As of 2010 drug treatments take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony.   Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult;. 
  
• Axon, a long extension of a neuron which has a membrane constructed to support the uni-directional flow of action potential from the dendritic tree and cell body to the synaptic terminals.   offshoots provide further plasticity is where axons generate projections that head off in novel directions.  A notable example involves blind people reading Braille where typical tactile cortex activation is accompanied by activation of the visual cortex.  Injuries to the nervous system can produce similar remapping as axons that have lost contact with targets because the targets were previously destroyed, search for other active neurons to synapse with in neighboring parts of the cortex.  The remapping of the axon's path results in waves of plasticity as the newly targeted neurons perform remapping too.  Such remapping is seen when practicing a skill, such as learning to play a new song by repeated physical or mental activity. 
  functions.  
• Sensory projection neurons can remap, causing waves of further remapping downstream.  It happens during repeated practice and in tactile map of skin around nipples of new mother rats. 
  

Adolescence; Or, Dude, Where's my Frontal Cortex?

1. Adolescence shapes the frontal cortex
2. Adolescence is only understood in the context of the delayed frontal cortex's maturation, making it: frustrating, great, asinine, impulsive, inspiring, destructive, self-destructive, selfless, selfish, impossible and world changing.  Sapolsky adds it's when someone is most likely to kill or be killed.  A time of life of maximal risk taking, novelty seeking, and affiliation with peers.  

The nuts and bolts of frontal cortical maturation

Frontal Cortical Changes in Cognition in Adolescence

• Working memory is a dominant function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the areas it connects with.  Prefrontal neurons implement an active memory continuing to fire after the signal is gone for potentially dozens of seconds from the inferior temporal cortex (multi-sensory integration area) and lower level sensory neurons characterized by Hubel & Weisel, while the short-term memory task continues.  If the prefrontal cortex gets distracted the memory is lost from consciousness.  Earl Miller argues the prefrontal cortex implements the rules that decide which working memory neurons will fire (Spring 2017). 
  , Flexible rule use, Executive organization, Task shifting. 
• Mentalization is to understand someone else's perspective of how the world appears to be.  Understanding irony reflects the development of sophisticated abstract cognitive mentalization. 
  
  
• Perspective taking with improved detection of irony. 
  

Frontal Cortical Changes in Emotional Regulation

Adolescent Risk Taking

Peers, social acceptance, and social exclusion

Empathy, sympathy, and moral reasoning

• Allowing the brain's signals to act unconsciously, thus
  
• Avoiding overwhelming emotional pain becoming one's total conscious inhibiting focus. 

Adolescent violence

• High emotions, need for peer approval, novelty seeking and limited frontal cortex of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain.  It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex.  Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do.  The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task.  It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success.  It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower.  The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information.  The frontal cortex tracks rules.  Over a lifetime that builds into a costly activity.  Once it tires responses become less prosocial.  But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum.  The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations.  The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies.  The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation.  It does not complete development until the mid-20s.  It includes spindle neurons.  It is easily damaged.  Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system. 
  . And
• Limited self-regulation and poor judgment
  
• Marshmallows! Problem mothers, Observing violence, Bullying;

Back to the Crib, Back to the Womb

Complexification

Stages

Feeling someone else's pain

• Intentional and unintentional harm
• Harm to a person and to an object;  These happen with age as the PAG is periaqueductal gray, an ancient core brain structure that projects pain sensations to the amygdala.   response lessens and the vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  and dmPFC is dorsomedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • A major agent of the sense of self and theory of mind in human adults. 
    
  • It participates in altruism.  
  , precuneus, superior temporal sulcus separates the superior temporal gyrus from the middle temporal gyrus within the temporal lobe.  It is implicated in multi-sensory processing.  It helps mediate theory of mind.  It has been found to participate in the McGurk effect (Feb 2017). 
  , temporoparietal junction is the temporoparietal juncture: left, right; where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, an area of the cortex with projections from the thalamus, limbic system, visual, auditory and somatosensory networks.  It supports modeling of self and others. 
  engage. 
  

Moral Development

Marshmallows

Consequences

Let's start at the very beginning: The importance of mothers

Any kind of mother in a storm

Different routes to the same place

Observing Violence

Bullying

A key question

• Genes play a role
  
• Fetal environment contributes
  
• Most important is the cumulative number of adverse event categories experienced. 
  

A sledgehammer

• Low IQ and poor cognitive skills is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. 
  .  
• Attachment is John Bowlby's model of mother infant bonding.  He argued that infants need: love, warmth, affection, responsiveness, stimulation, consistency, reliability; or they become anxious, depressed, and/or poorly attached adults.  Evolutionarily, sociopaths may be highly successful as managers and leaders but they are probably anxious.  Sapolsky notes the powerful association between murder rates and stopping pregnant girls from terminating unwanted pregnancies.  Typical mothers also provide training on social conventions and their children's position in the group hierarchy.  Children raised without a mother's support fail to understand social constraints and when to use social behaviors.  And in the presence of unsupportive mothers newborns attach to negative stimuli.  This response is explained by the SHRP.  Abused children subsequently seek out abusive relationships as adults.  And a percentage of infants abused by their mothers become abusive mothers. 
  problems 
• Anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards.  Major anxiety results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density.  Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women.  Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. 
  & depression is a debilitating state which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels; and an accumulation of traumatic events.  There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015).  The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure.  Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past.  It affects 12% of men and 20% of women.  It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016).  Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression.  Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease.   It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016).  During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling.  There is an association between depression and particular brain regions: Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Abnormalities of the ACC.  Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable.  Treatments include: CBT, UMHS depression management.  As of 2010 drug treatments take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony.   Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult; 
• Decreased: Total brain size, Gray matter, White matter, Frontal cortical of the cerebral cortex is at the front of the brain.  It includes the: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex.  Sapolsky asserts it makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do.  The frontal cortex supports working memory to sustain focus on a task.  It also coordinates the strategic actions necessary to achieve success.  It provides impulse control, regulation of emotion, and willpower.  The prefrontal cortex maintains focus by deprioritizing currently irrelevant streams of information.  The frontal cortex tracks rules.  Over a lifetime that builds into a costly activity.  Once it tires responses become less prosocial.  But practice shifts operation of tasks to the cerebellum.  The frontal cortex signals the tegmentum and accumbens with the conclusions of its expectancy/discrepancy calculations.  The frontal lobe provides executive function, considering bits of information, assessing patterns and then prioritizing the strategies.  The frontal lobe is the most recent part of the brain to evolve and involves a disproportionate percentage of primate-unique genes in its development and operation.  It does not complete development until the mid-20s.  It includes spindle neurons.  It is easily damaged.  Sapolsky (Nauta) notes that its ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a quasi-member of the limbic system. 
  metabolism, Connectivity between regions, Sizes of individual brain regions; except for
  
• Enlarged amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  
  

Culture, with both a big and a little c

Collectivist versus individualist cultures

Class differences

• Wealthy is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker.  It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche.   , upper middle class - Soft individualism, with authoritative is a parenting style focused on arbitrary, rigid rules and demands with behavior shaped by punishment.   or permissive is a parenting style where rules aren't enforced and the children set the agenda. 
  parents facilitating fulfillment & using metaphors like: flowering, blooming, growing, blossoming; focused on individual children. 
  
• Stable, working class - Hard offensive individualism, with kids expected to maintain their authoritarian is a parenting style focused on arbitrary, rigid rules and demands with behavior shaped by punishment.   parent's upward socioeconomic momentum. 
  
• Collapsed, lower class - Hard defensive individualism, with authoritarian is a parenting style focused on arbitrary, rigid rules and demands with behavior shaped by punishment.   parents focused on keeping what had been achieved so far.  Parents hoped to provide shelter.  Children are treated as a group. 
  

Nine long months

Boy and girl brains, whatever that might mean

• Rodent brains aren't fully sexually differentiated at birth - a situation which continues postnatally
• Testosterone enters the target brain cells where it is converted to estrogen.  And its very hard to quantify amounts experimentally. 
  
• Female brains:
• Have complex wiring of the fetal hypothalamus is essential to many operations of the body.  It has many small sub-regions whose main functions are to regulate hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual behavior, and similar body operations.  Its (paraventricular nucleus) is closely connected to the pituitary which secrets hormones into the bloodstream ( => acth -> adrenal cortex => cortisol (+)->  amygdala & (-)-> hippocampus).  
• From rodent mothers treated with testosterone throughout pregnancy produced pseudo-hermaphrodite have the external body characteristics of one sex but the internal gonads of the other.  Female fetuses experimentally bathed in testosterone throughout pregnancy are born with male external characteristics but female gonads. 
  daughters who were more aggressive, performed more rough-and-tumble play is a powerful tool for learning social competence.  It appears universal among socially complex species.  It has an evolved high priority displacing foraging and using up energy stores.  There are a number of behavioral strategies practiced in play that train those participating.  Play:
  
  • Supports safe practice of using social tools.  Allows for trying out roles and honing motor skills. 
    
  • Allows a peer group to provide context for these developments: Approach to hierarchy; etc.  Parents will aim to select the peer group. 
    
  • It integrates cultural details from local neighborhoods
    
  • It supports practice of aggression. 
    
  • Demonstrates that transient stress is enjoyable. 
  • It allows the developing neuron network to identify which synapses to prune.  
  , vocalized and mounted as males, but were as interested in infants as the control females. 
  
• Male brains:
• In rodents prenatal testosterone exposure had masculinizing organizational effects resulting in adult male activation effects of testosterone and estrogen.  
• Most experiments on humans have had limited success in clarifying the significance of these potential effects. 
  

Expanding the scope of "environment"

• Food/malnutrition and alcohol/opioids/cocaine addiction 
  
• Pathogens
  
• Maternal stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  impacts fetal development.  Indirectly the mothers tend to have less healthy diets.  More directly hypertension is high blood pressure.  It is directly associated with death rate due to pressure induced damage to the left ventricle and in general to cardiovascular diseases.  Treated with antihypertensives: Diuretics, Calcium channel blockers, Angiotensin receptor blockers or Beta blockers.   and immune system has to support and protect an inventory of host cell types, detect and respond to invaders and maintain the symbiont equilibrium within the microbiome.  It detects microbes which have breached the secreted mucus barrier, driving them back and fortifying the barrier.  It culls species within the microbiome that are expanding beyond requirements.  It destroys invaders who make it into the internal transport networks.  As part of its initialization it has immune cells which suppress the main system to allow the microbiome to bootstrap.  The initial microbiome is tailored by the antibodies supplied from the mother's milk while breastfeeding.  The immune system consists of two main parts the older non-adaptive part and the newer adaptive part.  The adaptive part achieves this property by being schematically specified by DNA which is highly variable.  By rapid reproduction the system recombines the DNA variable regions in vast numbers of offspring cells which once they have been shown not to attack the host cell lines are used as templates for interacting with any foreign body (antigen).  When the immune cell's DNA hyper-variable regions are expressed as y-shaped antibody proteins they typically include some receptor like structures which match the surfaces of the typical antigen.  Once the antibody becomes bound to the antigen the immune system cells can destroy the invader. 
  impacts compromise the fetus.  And stressed mothers secrete glucocorticoids which can have lifelong impacts on the fetus are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  . 
  

Back to when you were just a fertilized egg

• Aggression
• Neurotransmitter, growth factors are chemical signals which stimulate cellular growth.  In the brain they induce plasticity. 
  and hormone are signalling molecules: ACTH, TRH, Melanocyte stimulating hormone, Testosterone, Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Insulin, Growth hormone, Estrogen, Progesterone, Angiotensin II, Asprosin, EPO, Irisin, Leptin, FGF21 hormone, Prostaglandins, TSH, Thyroxine, Glococorticoids; that are transported by the circulatory system to interact with target organs having appropriate receptors.  The levels of hormones can fluctuate massively, as in pregnancy. 
  specifications
  
• Enzymes, a protein with a structure which allows it to operate as a chemical catalyst and a control switch. 
  that manage neurotransmitter, growth factor and hormone transmitter, signal and receptor, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal.  When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure.  In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel.  The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. 
  lifecycles.  

Part 1: Genes from the bottom up

• DNA (DNA), a polymer composed of a chain of deoxy ribose sugars with purine or pyrimidine side chains.  DNA naturally forms into helical pairs with the side chains stacked in the center of the helix.  It is a natural form of schematic string.  The purines and pyrimidines couple so that AT and GC pairs make up the stackable items.  A code of triplets of base pairs (enabling 64 separate items to be named) has evolved which now redundantly represents each of the 20 amino-acids that are deployed into proteins, along with triplets representing the termination sequence.  Chemical modifications and histone binding (chromatin) allow cells to represent state directly on the DNA schema.  To cope with inconsistencies in the cell wide state second messenger and evolved amplification strategies are used. 
  transcription is the process where DNA is converted into messenger m-RNA.  A complex of enzymes cooperates to bind to the DNA and generate the m-RNA copy.  There are a number of such transcription complexes which are based on RNA polymerase I, II or III. 
  is regulated with transcription factors are enzymes which associate with a transcription complex to bind to the DNA and control its transcription and hence translation into proteins.  The regulation of DNA transcription and protein synthesis are reviewed by Tsonis.  Transcription factors allow environmental state to become reflected in the control of DNA transcription.  Transcription factors can regulate multiple genes, allowing network effects & multiple transcription factors can regulate a gene allowing sophisticated control processes.  In AWF the transcription, translation and deployment infrastructure of the eukaryotic cell has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. 
  , many of which operate on the 95% of non-coding DNA that enables sophisticated transcriptional control mechanisms. 
  
• Epi-genetic represent state surfaces within cells and eggs which can be operationally modified so as to provide a heritable structure.  DNA, histones and other stable structures provide surfaces where these states may be setup.  Egg carriers are in a particularly powerful position to induce epi-genetic changes.  Sapolsky notes [childhood] events which persistently alter brain structure and behavior via epi-genetic mechanisms including: pair-bonding in prairie voles, as they first mate, is supported by changes in oxytocin & vasopressin receptor gene regulation in the nucleus accumbens. 
  changes alter the way genes work over a life-time or longer. 
• Alternate splicing of introns expands the proteins generated. 
  
• Transposons are regions of DNA which are copied and inserted into other areas of the DNA schemata.  Their effect and existence was first noted by Barbara McClintock.  Plants, when under stress, utilize transposons to rapidly evolve their genomes.  Animal's immune systems and neuronal stem cells when forming memories, also leverage transposons.   radically change the DNA sequence. 
  

• Genes encode the 1,500 different transcription factors
• The human genome contains four million transcription factor binding sites. 
  
• The presence of a particular set of transcription factors control the transcription of a network of genes, including those coding for other transcription factors.  
• An average cell uses 200,000 transcription factor binding sites to generate its distinctive gene-expression profile. 
  

Part 2: Genes from the top down--Behavior Genetics

• It was assumed that traits found in families were genetic but the environmental contribution could not be easily disentangled. 
  
• Twin studies allowed an assessment of the concordance rate is a percentage that indicates how much genomic & epi-genetic effects contribute to a behavior of twins: Schizophrenia is 50%;
  for behaviors. 
• Identical twin studies compare monozygotic and fraternal twins.  Twins were found who had been separated at birth introducing variation in environments.  But there are issues:
  
• Environment is assumed to be shared equally by monozygotic twins and same sex fraternal twins but is not. 
  
• Parents treat identical twins differently to fraternal twins. 
  
• Only monozygotic twins share placentas (in 75% of cases) and this will make their environments more similar.  Epi-genetic represent state surfaces within cells and eggs which can be operationally modified so as to provide a heritable structure.  DNA, histones and other stable structures provide surfaces where these states may be setup.  Egg carriers are in a particularly powerful position to induce epi-genetic changes.  Sapolsky notes [childhood] events which persistently alter brain structure and behavior via epi-genetic mechanisms including: pair-bonding in prairie voles, as they first mate, is supported by changes in oxytocin & vasopressin receptor gene regulation in the nucleus accumbens. 
  and prenatal environment are shared for monozygotic twins. 
  
• Adoptive parents aren't chosen randomly but are matched to the child undermining the assumption that the environment is different. 
  
• Adoptive parents tend to be more educated, wealthier is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker.  It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche.   , more psychiatrically healthy than biological parents. 
  
• Genes influence on heritability is a population genetics measure indicating the percentage of total variation attributable to genetics.  Wearing skirts in the US is highly correlated with being female and is thus of high heritability, but is not a strongly inherited trait.  Sapolsky notes that research often inflates heritability scores because: Environmental influence is hard to control for and assess and it may significantly alter the operation of genes; so the more environments a gene's heritability is studied in the lower the score is likely to be.  It is only meaningful to define what a gene does in a particular environment. 
  and inheritance indicates that genes strongly influence average levels of a trait.  Sapolsky notes that inheritance influences why humans are smarter than turnips!  Which is not typically as interesting as why one human is smarter than another -- which is indicated by the trait's heritability. 
  differs.  Most behavioral genetics studies are interested in heritability but research methods tend to inflate heritability values because environmental effects on genes will only be highlighted by comparing results obtained in different environments.  A study in a single environment can't separate the genetic and environmental contributions. 
  
• There are ubiquitous gene/environment interactions which alter the qualitative effects of the gene:
• Phenylketonuria is lethal when the diet contains phenylalanine AND the person has the mutation. 
  
• Depression is a debilitating state which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels; and an accumulation of traumatic events.  There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015).  The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure.  Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past.  It affects 12% of men and 20% of women.  It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016).  Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression.  Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease.   It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016).  During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling.  There is an association between depression and particular brain regions: Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Abnormalities of the ACC.  Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable.  Treatments include: CBT, UMHS depression management.  As of 2010 drug treatments take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony.   Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult; risk increases with certain mutations of the 5HTT gene AND childhood trauma includes different types of stressor: No mother, Unsupportive mother, paternal deprivation, Childhood poverty, [Observing ]violence, Natural disasters, Bullying; which impact development and produce adult problems. 
  
  • The adversities are stressful and alter stress physiology producing children and adults with elevated: Glucocorticoids, CRH and ACTH, Sympathetic nervous system activity.  Early stress permanently impacts the brains ability to control glucocorticoid secretion.  The more stressors experienced and the less protective factors, the less likely it is that the child will cope and become a resilient adult.  The stressors expand the size and activity of the amygdala helping it ignore prefrontal cortex constraints.  And they degrade the dopamine network through impacts to the development of the mesolimbic system and elevated adult glucocorticoids depleting dopamine. 
    
  • The problems include attachment issues and adults with: depression (dopamine depletion and lowered thresholds making adult stressors more influential), anxiety, substance abuse (dopamine depletion, excessive adult exposure to glucocorticoids increasing drug craving & poorly developed frontal cortex), impaired cognitive abilities especially frontocortical with impaired hippocampal-dependent learning, impaired impulse control (amygdala), impaired emotional control, antisocial behavior and violence, relationships that replicate the childhood adversities.  Abused children who develop PTSD show decreased hippocampal volume.  Glucocorticoids decrease hippocampal production of BDNF.  Childhood poverty impacts development of the corpus callosum & ensures by kindergarten, poor marshmallow test performance.  Childhood poverty increases impacts from environmental stressors: Toxins, Liquor stores instead of fresh food markets, No transport infrastructure, Limited jobs in the immediate vicinity, Little access to low cost capital, Low positions in all social hierarchies.  
  exposure.  
• Higher IQ is associated with a mutation of FADS2 AND breastfeeding is a mammalian adaptation which delivers breast milk to the infant and supports the mother's body in its transformation after birth.  It is known to reduce the risk of: breast cancer: BRCA1, triple negative tumors; ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis; and may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. 
  
  .  Sapolsky concludes "it's not meaningful to ask what a gene does, just what it does in a particular environment." 
  

Part 3: So what do genes actually have to do with behaviors we're interested in?

• Sapolsky warns that candidate studies usually identify tiny effects.  Genome wide studies show that behaviors are influenced by huge numbers of genes.  That results in non-specificity and context dependency of gene effects. 
  
• Behavioral studies predict genes for low serotonin is a neurotransmitter.  it is:
  • Inversely associated with: human impulsive, cricket, mollusk, crustacean; aggression.  Low levels of serotonin are associated with impulsive aggression ranging from psychological measures of hostility to overt violence and cognitive impulsivity and impulsive suicide. 
    
  • Nearly all synthesized in the Raphe nucleus.  Tryptophan hydroxylase makes serotonin from the amino-acid tryptophan.  Monoamine oxidase degrades serotonin.  The serotonin receptor binds serotonin to initiate cross membrane signalling.  The serotonin transporter actively removes serotonin from synapses.  Serotonin levels can be increased with: exercise, high light levels, consumption of chickpeas and traditional lime boiled corn tortillas.  Reuptake is inhibited by SSRIs.  Variants of the genes coding for these various enzymes alter the strength of their effects. 
    
  • Increasing serotonin signalling does not lessen impulsiveness in normal subjects but did in those prone to impulsivity.  However, such experiments are fraught with complexity:
  • Transient changes induced by drugs may adjust the immediate levels of serotonin but may not demonstrate structural effects. 
    
  • Gene variants likely produce structural changes in the developing brain.  
  • Effects monitored in experiments are often tiny.  
  • Behavioral changes: Violence, Arson, Exhibitionism; seen in different test subjects may be difficult to compare.  
  • Monoamine oxidase has high gene/environment interactions undermining heritability estimates.  Its gene promotor is regulated by stress and glucocorticoids.  So non genetic factors such as childhood adversity and adult provocation appear to be significant.  
  levels are expected to be associated with impulsive aggression.  Molecular studies found high levels associated with aggression but also suggested the serotonin system adapts to the MAO-A is the gene for monoamine oxidase-A, the enzyme which degrades serotonin.  The MAO-A gene promotor is regulated by stress and glococorticoids.   knockouts and mutations that remove or degrade monoamine oxidase-A, so expected high levels of serotonin may be much lower!  And monoamine oxidase-A effects on behavior show strong gene/environment interactions: Caspi2002 study by Duke's Avshalom Caspi and colleagues follows a large cohort of children from birth to age 26, monitoring genetics, upbringing, and adult behavior.  Demonstrating strong gene/environment interactions MAO-A variant status AND a history of severe childhood abuse tripled the likelihood of antisocial behavior. 
  . 
• Genes generating lower dopamine is a synaptic signal supporting generalized goal-directed behavior & anticipation of reward.  Its significance is that the receptors that detect the signal are of the slow acting type and are used to alter (modulate) the response of fast acting dopaminergic neural circuits in which the receptors are deployed (LTP).  The signal detects significant changes including predictions of models and actual results which differ unexpectedly.  The dopamine network architecture is designed to signal the possibility of any type of reward: Norm violation punishment, Winning a lottery, & Misfortune of an envied competitor.  Dopamine signalling:
  
  • Rescales continuously to accommodate the range of intensity offered by different stimuli.  So dopamine's responses to any reward habituate.  GABA is released by some tegmental neurons to induce habituation. 
    
  • Reflects the anticipation of reward.  It supports establishment of a relationship between a signal, working for a reward and obtaining the reward, but subsequently dopamine is mainly released encouraging the work, right after the signal supporting anticipation of the reward.  Anticipation requires learning and is reflected in hippocampus activity.  That explains context dependent cravings.  And the learning architecture means reliable cues become rewarding.  The accumbens supports willpower.  And dopamine
    
  • Promotes goal-oriented behavior needed to obtain & likely to achieve the reward - through the dopamine projections to the prefrontal cortex.  That makes dopamine central to:
    
  • Motivation.  This binding fails in depression - due to stress and in anxiety - due to signals from the amygdala.  
  • The prefrontal cortex's mesocortically stimulated support for willpower to act to delay rewards.  To sustain work for delayed rewards additional dopamine is released based on the length of the delay and the rewards uncertainty (modelled in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - which promotes the long term and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - which promotes the short term) and the anticipated size of the reward (modelled in the accumbens).  Impulsiveness in ADHD is reflected in abnormal dopamine processing.  Addictive drugs bias the dopamine network towards impulsiveness.  
  • Is lowered by certain gene variants which induce: less dopamine in the synapse, fewer receptors, lower responsiveness of receptors; associated with (as tiny effects in hugely varying social scenarios): sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, extroversion; where:
    
  • The receptor D4's gene shows high variability.  The D47R form is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.  
  • Dopamine is degraded by COMT.  The COMT gene includes a variant which is highly efficient reducing dopamine signalling but with complicating gene/environment interactions.  
  • Dopamine is removed from the synapse by a reuptake transporter DAT. 
    
  signaling are associated with sensation seeking, risk taking, attentional problems, and extroversion: 
  
• One of the five or more dopamine receptors, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal.  When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure.  In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel.  The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. 
  , DRD4 is dopamine receptor D4, which is found in the cortex and nucleus accumbens.  It is very highly variable with more than 10 variants: 7R; in humans. 
  , is the focus of research.  Variant DRD47R is a variant of dopamine receptor D4.  7R label reflects the presence of seven repeats of a variable section of the gene for D4.  The frequency of the gene varies across populations and is associated with: human migration, & differences of collectivist (1%) and individualist (upto 70% in historically migratory) cultures.  This gene variant produces a receptor protein which is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.  Sapolsky explains it is associated with: ADHD, alcoholism, extroversion, financial risk taking, impulsivity, sensation & novelty seeking, promiscuity; modified by gene/environment interactions:
  
  • Children with 7R AND insecure attachment to their parents are less generous than average.  Otherwise children with 7R are more generous. 
    
  • Students with 7R expressed the least interest in prosocial groups, unless given a religious prime in which case they were the most prosocial.  
  • People with 7R are relatively poor at gratification-postponement tasks IF AND ONLY IF they grew up poor. 
    
  is consistently associated with ADHD is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a chronic condition including hyperactivity, impulsiveness and low attention.  Dopamine response profiles to temporal discounting tasks are abnormal for ADHD sufferers.  Imaging studies show differences in the brains of ADHD sufferers.  Stimulants have been found to have a calming effect on ADHD sufferers.  Causally associated factors include:
  • Family history
  • Genetics
  • May be influenced by high doses of Tylenol during pregnancy (Sep 2016). 
    
  • Environmental factors - a consistant daily schedule, praise for good behavior, clear bondaries, enough sleep and limiting distractions are all part of behavioral therapy for ADHD.  
    
  • CNS developmental problems.   
  .  But the other effects are conditional on the environment.  Sapolsky notes D47Rs association with individualism.  
• Efficient COMT is catechol-O-methyltransferase which breaks down dopamine.  The COMT gene has variants which alter dopamine signalling intensity.  One variant is associated with a more efficient enzyme which is associated with: higher rates of extroversion, aggression, criminality, conduct disorder; but modified by gene/environment interactions:
  • Highly efficient COMT variant is associated with anger traits WHEN there was childhood sexual abuse.    
  dopamine degradation genes are associated with extroversion, aggression, criminality, and conduct disorder.  Anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. 
  traits are conditional on childhood sexual abuse. 
  
• Less efficient DAT is dopamine transporter, a monoamine transporter, which performs reuptake of dopamine from the synapse to the axon terminal.  DAT genes include variants.  Those with inefficient reuptake capabilities, which induce higher levels of synaptic dopamine, in the striatum are associated with people drawn to happy faces, repelled by angry faces, have a positive parenting style. 
  genes leave higher dopamine levels.  People with these genes in the striatum (basal ganglia) is a brain region which is important in learning motor habits.  To do this the ventral striatum assigns values to winning. 
  are more social signal oriented means people who: Are drawn more than average to happy faces, Are repelled by angry faces, Use positive parenting styles.  .  But the research is inconsistent.  
• Genes generating oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else.  The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening outgroup.  Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions.  It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking.  Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them.  It is associated with pair bonding.  It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child.  Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin.  Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces.  Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy.  And another receptor gene variant which is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships.  Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants.  Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior.  Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning.  Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. 
  and vasopressin developed by duplication and subsequent mutation of the vasotocin gene, along with oxytocin, during the initial formation of mammals.   It acts as a hormone regulating water retention in the kidneys.  It supports paternal behavior stimulated by a female giving birth.  Sex releases vasopressin in the nucleus accumbens of male prairie voles.  And prairie voles have more receptors in the accumbens than other voles supporting their pair bonding.  This situation is similar in bonobos relative to chimps where it encourages social bonding - but not monogamy.  Vasopressin is made in hypothalamic neurons which project to the posterior pituitary for release as a hormone.  It is also a neuropeptide transmitting from hypothalamic projections to the ventral tegmentum, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal cortex.  And it is made & secreted in other areas of the brain.  Vasopressin enhances aggression in paternal prairie vole males.  But the aggression is then maintained by social learning. 
  affect prosociality is prioritizing benefiting others through: Help, Charity, Truth; even if many are acts of restitution to balance out antisocial acts.  Due to the Insula's binding of physical and metaphorical disgust, physically washing your hands can be enough to reduce the need for a prosocial act.  
  .  Research indicates one oxytocin receptor gene variant is associated with extreme aggression in children & adult psychopathy.  But no characterization of the variants chemistry has been completed yet.  Gene/environment interactions occur:
  
• Less sensitive mothering is predicted by one variant when coupled with childhood adversity includes different types of stressor: No mother, Unsupportive mother, paternal deprivation, Childhood poverty, [Observing ]violence, Natural disasters, Bullying; which impact development and produce adult problems. 
  
  • The adversities are stressful and alter stress physiology producing children and adults with elevated: Glucocorticoids, CRH and ACTH, Sympathetic nervous system activity.  Early stress permanently impacts the brains ability to control glucocorticoid secretion.  The more stressors experienced and the less protective factors, the less likely it is that the child will cope and become a resilient adult.  The stressors expand the size and activity of the amygdala helping it ignore prefrontal cortex constraints.  And they degrade the dopamine network through impacts to the development of the mesolimbic system and elevated adult glucocorticoids depleting dopamine. 
    
  • The problems include attachment issues and adults with: depression (dopamine depletion and lowered thresholds making adult stressors more influential), anxiety, substance abuse (dopamine depletion, excessive adult exposure to glucocorticoids increasing drug craving & poorly developed frontal cortex), impaired cognitive abilities especially frontocortical with impaired hippocampal-dependent learning, impaired impulse control (amygdala), impaired emotional control, antisocial behavior and violence, relationships that replicate the childhood adversities.  Abused children who develop PTSD show decreased hippocampal volume.  Glucocorticoids decrease hippocampal production of BDNF.  Childhood poverty impacts development of the corpus callosum & ensures by kindergarten, poor marshmallow test performance.  Childhood poverty increases impacts from environmental stressors: Toxins, Liquor stores instead of fresh food markets, No transport infrastructure, Limited jobs in the immediate vicinity, Little access to low cost capital, Low positions in all social hierarchies.  
  .  
• Aggression is predicted by one variant when coupled with drinking. 
  
• Seeking emotional support in times of stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  among Americans, including Korean Americans, but not Koreans!  
• Genes that control testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky.  That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous.  Testosterones effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged).  The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates.  Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor.   This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal.  The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex.  But the detected genetic influences are small.  Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus.  Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons.  This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them.  Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference.  Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety.  And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone.  People become overconfident and overly optimistic. 
  , estrogens is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently.  Estrogen:
  • Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state.  There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects.  The levels of each type of receptor is independently regulated.  Different receptor variants are associated with:
  • Higher rates of anxiety among women
  • Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
  and glucocorticoids are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  .  
• The testosterone receptor, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal.  When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure.  In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel.  The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. 
  gene alleles have been studied.  They alter the responsiveness of the receptor.  Some research associates the more potent receptor with violent crimes and masculinization of the cortex is the main part of the cerebral cortex in mammals.  It was originally thought to exist only in mammals but is also present in reptiles and birds buried behind other areas of the for-brain.  The for-brain develops based on a genetic plan consistent across all vertebrates.  The neocortex processes vision in the visual hierarchy V1, V2, V3 .. V5 ... V20; and language with areas including Wernicke's and Broca's with sensors in the inner ear.  Primate species with bigger social groups have larger cortices.  Human cortex size suggests traditional human cultures had an average size of 150 people. 
  of adolescent in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment.  And it is staged encouraging the adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen.  It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development.  The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively.  The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time.  The rest dissolve.  So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal.  The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first.  The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult.  Adolescents:
  • Don't detect irony effectively.  They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.  
  • Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup.  Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards.  Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack.  Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor.  The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards.  Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting.  And adolescents start to see other people's perspective. 
    
  • Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females.  Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.  
  • Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents.  Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity.  Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.  
  • Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego.  But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations. 
    
  boys.  High testosterone only associates with aggression in that receptor variant.  But Sapolsky notes these associations are not very predictive. 
  
• Different variants of the estrogen is a generic term for a number of related steroid hormones each of which works differently.  Estrogen:
  • Contributes to maternal aggression but it can reduce aggression and enhance empathy, depending on brain state.  There are two different estrogen receptor types which mediate these conflicting effects.  The levels of each type of receptor is independently regulated.  Different receptor variants are associated with:
  • Higher rates of anxiety among women
  • Higher rates of antisocial behavior and conduct disorder in men
  receptor, in biological cells these proteins are able to span the cell membrane and present an active site which is tailored to interact with a specific signal.  When the receptor pairs with its signal, its overall shape changes resulting in changes in the part internal to the cell which can be relayed by the cells signalling infrastructure.  In neuron synapses one type of receptor (fast) is associated with an ion channel.  The other (slow) is associated with a signalling enzyme chain and modulates the neuron's response. 
  are associated with higher rates:
  
• Of anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards.  Major anxiety results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density.  Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women.  Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. 
  in women.  In genetically manipulated mice absence of the receptor gene alters aggression in females but is dependent on the number of brothers the mice had in utero. 
  
• Of antisocial behavior & conduct disorder in men
• Glucocorticoids gene/environment interactions have been researched.  The MR receptor gene allele AND childhood abuse produce an amygdala that is hyper-reactive to threat.  Sapolsky notes research has looked at two of the 20,000 human genes in a few of the astronomical variety of environments.  The situation is daunting!
  
• Instead of focusing where you already know there are a few relevant genes, 'fishing expeditions' aim to find all candidate genes from the genome.  They commonly use GWAS is genome-wide association study which examines common genetic variants (mostly SNPs) of different individuals to find those common variants that are associated with a trait.  Sample size has been made manageable by the HapMap SNP clustering strategy.  To detect the uncommon variants with GWAS would be exponentially more costly and time consuming.  So it can't be used to detect schizophrenia or autism SNPs which are associated with a significant reduction in reproductive fitness and will thus never become common in the population. 
  leveraging SNP is single nucleotide polymorphism where single base pairs have changed in two chromosomes of the same type.  There are 10 million common SNPs in the human genome.  There are a limited number of chromosomal types (Haplotypes).  This results in SNPs clustering into packs.  On average 30 to 40 SNPs travel together.  Knowing one or two SNPs in a local neighborhood predicts the others that are likely to be present. 
  clustering.  Sapolsky notes the huge level of researchers focused in this area.  
• He concludes "genes aren't about inevitability.  Instead they're about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potential, and vulnerabilities." 
  

Centuries to millennia before

• Gender differences in mathematics where the more gender equality the less difference there was in math scores with Iceland's girls scoring better than boys, while most other countries have boys scoring better especially in unequal cultures like Turkey's. 
• Earlier adoption of the hoe over the plow predicts gender equality in today's culture. 
  
• Long term impacts - population density in 1500 significantly predicts how authoritarian a government was in 2000. 
  

• Collectivist cultures compared to individualist cultures ON AVERAGE:
• Collectivists seek harmony, interdependence, conformity, needs of the group guide behavior; judge themselves based on social interactions.  Individuals don't want to fall behind the group.  Influencing someone else is stressful with increased glucocorticoid are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  secretion.  When looking at calm facial expressions Chinese activate the mesolimbic dopamine pathway includes projections between the tegmentum and the accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus;
  .  Problem-solving is more relational and uses spatial strategies assuming interactions with the environment: friction; and excel at relative assessments.  Sensory information is processed holistically with East Asians first scanning the whole picture.  Collectivist cultures are responses to:
  
• Growing rice which demands communal work.  DRD4 is dopamine receptor D4, which is found in the cortex and nucleus accumbens.  It is very highly variable with more than 10 variants: 7R; in humans. 
  (7R is a variant of dopamine receptor D4.  7R label reflects the presence of seven repeats of a variable section of the gene for D4.  The frequency of the gene varies across populations and is associated with: human migration, & differences of collectivist (1%) and individualist (upto 70% in historically migratory) cultures.  This gene variant produces a receptor protein which is relatively unresponsive to dopamine.  Sapolsky explains it is associated with: ADHD, alcoholism, extroversion, financial risk taking, impulsivity, sensation & novelty seeking, promiscuity; modified by gene/environment interactions:
  
  • Children with 7R AND insecure attachment to their parents are less generous than average.  Otherwise children with 7R are more generous. 
    
  • Students with 7R expressed the least interest in prosocial groups, unless given a religious prime in which case they were the most prosocial.  
  • People with 7R are relatively poor at gratification-postponement tasks IF AND ONLY IF they grew up poor. 
    
  ) occurs in 1% of East Asians.  In parts of China where wheat is grown rather than rice the culture looks more individualist.
  
• Individualists seek autonomy, personal achievement, uniqueness, needs & rights of the individual; describing themselves based on intrinsic factors.  Individuals aim to get ahead.  And when looking at pictures of themselves they strongly activate the medial prefrontal cortex in Buckner's fMRI based analysis is part of the brain's default mode network.  It facilitates the flexible use of information during the construction of self-relevant mental simulations.  Nauta considered its ventromedial part as participating in the limbic system.  With the medial temporal lobe it converges on important integration nodes: posterior cingulate cortex.  .  Being influenced by others is stressful with increased glucocorticoid are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  secretion.  When looking at excited facial expressions European Americans activate the mesolimbic dopamine pathway includes projections between the tegmentum and the accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus;
  .  Problem-solving is more linear and uses linguistic strategies assuming intrinsic properties: weight, density; and excel at absolute assessments.  Sensory information is processed in a focused manner with Westerners first looking at a picture's center.  US individualism is a response to:
  
• Encouraging immigration which selects for independent people seeking to leave their former culture.  DRD4 (7R) occurs in 23% of Europeans & European Americans. 
  
• Produce different moral provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
  systems, enforced by shame is an emotional reaction to being discovered cheating on a friend. 
  in collectivist cultures and guilt is an emotion which alerts us to the risk of cheating on a friend.  To be culturally effective the individuals must have respect for the law. 
  in individual ones.  There is more in-group bias in collectivist cultures - express high empathy is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective.  It is implemented by spindle neurons.  It is context dependently mediated by estrogen.  It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them.  In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC.  If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured.  The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help.  But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC.  In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures.  Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people.  By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala.  Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do.  But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is.  Sociopaths do not develop empathy.   & activation of theory of mind of mind is the capability of adults, and even young children, to see that others think and perceive the world differently to them.  It typically develops around age three to four.  It supports the child's development of empathy.  It is associated with the DMPFC, precuneus, superior temporal sulcus & temporoparietal junction.  Subsequently more capabilities appear including: Understanding a second person's theory of mind about a third person, Perspectives and Irony.   for in-group observed as in pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so.  Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US.  .  
• It takes one generation for descendants of East Asian immigrants to America to be as individualist as European Americans.  
• Pastoralists & Southerners
• Nomadic herdsmen have cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  similarities attributed to their tough environments and minimal rule of law and centralized government.  Thieves can easily steel a pastoralist's herd.  Sapolsky suggests this asymmetric issue results in:
• Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining the empires and their neighbors' interactions.  Turchin shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles.  After the summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is used to augment Turchins findings. 
  
  Militarism abounds generating warrior classes.  
• Death in battle is exulted. 
  
• Culture of honor is a doomsday machine emotional signal, which Pinker explains as an advertisement of the desire to publically avenge even minor trespasses and insults.  . 
  
• High rates of polygamy and mistreatment of women. 
  
• Authoritarian parenting is a parenting style focused on arbitrary, rigid rules and demands with behavior shaped by punishment.  .  
• Monotheistic religions with hierarchy and interventionism 
• Ecology significantly shapes culture.  Sapolsky notes that culture can then be exported and persist in other environments.  So most humans' beliefs reflect the culture developed by preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists. 
• Sapolsky explains that people from the old South of the US have a similar violent honor culture that results in far more honor killings.  And he notes with caveats, historian David Hackett Fischer proposed this culture was due to the large numbers of herders from Scotland, Ireland and northern England.  
• Violence Turned Inward
  
• Sapolsky explores honor killings where he suggests girls are considered to have tarnished the reputation of the family by refusing an arranged marriage.  So they are executed by blood relatives, the act is rationalized religiously and carried out openly, ignoring any cross cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  tensions on the girls.  
• Stratified Versus Egalitarian Cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  - how unequally resources: land, food, goods, power, prestige; are distributed. 
  
• Hunter-gatherer societies are considered egalitarian.  Agriculture allowed surpluses to enable
  Deaton describes the wellbeing of people around the world today.  He explains the powerful benefit of public health strategies and the effect of growth in material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of aid. 
  
  Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  The situation he describes is complex including powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The biosphere, Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Health care. 
  
  
  inequality. 
  
• Sapolsky argues that stratified agricultural societies are better able to cope with unstable environments that develop resource shortages - sequestoring mortality in the lower classes -- and leveraging their chain of command to support conquest.  But he notes hunter-gatherers can move in search of a better environment. 
  
• Westernized societies are strikingly different in the level of inequality.  Saplosky notes higher income inequality correlates with less social capital is the collective quantity of resources such as trust, reciprocity & cooperation according to Sapolsky.   and is associated with high rates of bullying is a complex childhood adversity.  Sapolsky explains that targets of bullying aren't selected at random.  And bullies often come from families with single mothers or younger parents with low educational and economic prospects.  Sapolsky notes that someone who bullies and is also bullied is likely to be a real mess as an adult. 
  and antisocial punishment.  The powerful become more ambivalent of the weak, and less kind.  The poor respond to signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance.  In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively.  A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form.  Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell.  Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state.  Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals.  Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich.  Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors.  In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation.  To be credible signals must be hard to fake.  To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient.  To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. 
  of inequality by becoming more aggressive to one another.  Those who feel are models including ratings of situations which are evolutionarily associated with emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula.   poor become less healthy: Increased stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  , Resources shifted into private hands reducing public health is the proactive planning, coordination and execution of strategies to improve and safeguard the wellbeing of the public.  Its global situation is discussed in The Great Escape by Deaton.  Public health in the US is coordinated by the PHS federally but is mainly executed at the state and local levels.  Public health includes:
  • Awareness campaigns about health threatening activities including: Smoking, Over-eating, Alcohol consumption, Contamination with poisons: lead; Joint damage from over-exercise;
    
  • Research, monitoring and control of disease agents, processes and vectors by agencies including the CDC. 
    
  • Monitoring of the public's health by institutes including the NIH.  This includes screening for cancer & heart disease. 
    
  • Development, deployment and maintenance of infrastructure including: sewers, water plants and pipes.  
  • Development, deployment and maintenance of vaccination strategies.  
  • Development, deployment and maintenance of fluoridation. 
    
  • Development, deployment and maintenance of family planning services. 
    
  • Regulation and constraint of foods, drugs and devices by agencies including the FDA.  
  investments.  
• Population: size, density, heterogeneity
• Sapolsky notes more of humanity are living in urban cities.  He argues these are beneficial with healthier, wealthier is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker.  It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche.   , better
  This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex adaptive system (CAS).  Small world and scale free networks are considered. 
  
  networked, more innovative is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation.  While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity and supporting the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can drive their creations across the economy. 
  people than in rural populations.  And the urban living builds a different brain:
  
• Where the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  is more reactive to stressors.  
• This must cope with regularly encountering strangers that will never be seen again.  Sapolsky stresses this is a totally new scenario.  So growing cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  invented new mechanisms:
• Escalating punishment for norm violations as the population grows, applied by objective third parties - Sapolsky argues this is why moralistic punishing gods appeared.  
• Increasingly dense populations develop tight cultures: Autocratic, repressive, orthodox; and density exaggerates existing social tendencies.  But Sapolsky notes density is not synonymous with aggression in rats or humans. 
  
• People from different cultures intermixing need clear barriers to maintain peaceful coexistence.  
• The Residues of Cultural Crises 
• Sapolsky notes historically 'tight' countries have had more food shortages, lower food intake, & lower fat and protein in their population's diet.  Tightness is predicted by environmental degradation.  Sapolsky references Jared Diamond's Collapse highlighting of environmental degradation as explaining collapse in local civilizations.  
• Signals of disease are sensed by individuals providing behavioral immunity.  High historical incidence of: pandemics, communicable diseases, high infant & child mortality; predict tightness & reduce a community's openness to outsiders. 
  
• Cultural tightness correlates with a history of floods, droughts, and cyclones.  El Ninos is a rise in the equatorial Pacific Ocean's average temperature which occurs about every 12 years.  It is part of the Southern Oscillation.  El Ninos are associated with warmer, drier weather and droughts and food shortages in many developing countries. 
  doubled the likelihood of reactivating civil conflicts about power & resources.  Sapolsky notes this effect is opposite to the drivers for war in hunter-gatherers and baboons.  Climate change is expected to increase global conflict: Interpersonal violence, Group violence driven mainly by more droughts and expanding desertification as well as more usual temperature increase effects.  
• Oh, Why Not: Religion
  
• Sapolsky notes humanity has invented thousands of religions.  He draws out some patterns:
• Desert cultures is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  associate with monotheistic religions
• Rain forest dwellers have polytheistic
• Nomadic pastoralists gods value war & battle
• Agriculturalists gods alter the weather
  
• Large cultures with anonymous acts have moralizing gods.  
• He concludes:
1. A religion reflects the values of the culture that invented or adopted it, and it transmits those values
2. Religions foster the best and worst of our behaviors
3. It's complicated. 
   

Hobbes or Rousseau- how we got there

• Archaeological
• Contemporary humans living in pre-state tribal societies
  

• Work fewer hours for their food than traditional farmers do and they live longer and are healthier. 
• Fluid transfers between separate nomadic groups. 
  
• University of Alabama at Birmingham's Douglas Fry & Southern California's Christopher Boem view the violence situation as complex.  Capital punishment was executed to maintain: Fairness where successful hunters moan about being shortchanged, Indirect reciprocity which works well for unpredictable big-game hunting & sharing, Constraining despotism where the group is careful to punish norm violations by high-status individuals.  Sapolsky notes hunter gatherers detect despotism & enforce fairness using gossip is an evolved mechanism to enforce: fairness, indirect reciprocity, and avoidance of despotism.  It allows: reality testing, transfer of news, and consensus building; to maintain norms. 
  .  
  

• Makes us dependent on a few domesticated crops and animals resulting in vulnerability to: droughts, blights, zoonotic refers to a disease that transfers between animals and people. 
  diseases.  
• Encourages sedentary living forcing humans to live in close proximity to their feces is an efficient way of passing infection from one person to another.  It leverages network effects. 
  .  
• Generates surpluses resulting in hierarchies. 
  
• Enables war. 
  

The Evolution of Behavior

• Pair-bonding have similar body size, coloration and musculature.  Sapolsky's list of pair-bonding primates includes: marmosets, tamarins, owl monkeys, gibbons; as well as swans, jackals, beavers, prairie voles.  Selection has supported evolved capture of minimally aggressive strategies that do not depend on fighting muscle:
  • All males reproduce a few times. 
    
  • Males invest in parenting of the children - if he thinks they are his.  That is costly so they are choosy about which females to mate with and may pair-bond.  
  • Females look for mates whose behavior is: stable, affiliative; and who have good parenting skills.  Pair-bonding male birds are seen to display parenting skills during courtship. 
    
  • Females compete aggressively with one another to gain access to an attractive male.  And they use cuckolding strategies to gain access to great genes and parenting skills. 
    
  versus tournament species have asymmetric sizes, and musculature.  Males may be much bigger and more muscular than females and have conspicuous facial markings.  Sapolsky's tournament primates include: baboons, mandrills, rhesus monkeys, vervets, and chimps.  And he additionally lists gazelles, lions, sheep, peacocks, & elephant seals.  Selection has supported evolved capture of fighting skills and display.  Such males:
  
  • Use aggressive conflict to obtain high dominance rankings.  
  • A small percentage of high rank males do all the mating.  They will mate with any female anytime.  So they have evolved to invest in larger testes and higher sperm counts. 
    
  • Males do no investment in parenting of their children.  
  • Females look for signals of good genes.  This encourages sexual selection of signals of male health, status and dominance.  
  • Females don't compete with each other since they will all breed with the high rank males. 
    
  - two evolved social systems that demonstrate the internal logic with which evolved traits cluster.  
• Parent-offspring conflict is Robert Trivers theory to explain the allocation of parental resources to various offspring, from the implications of genetics on the family.  Observing that children want to take more than what their parents want to give Trivers concluded a parent should aim to transfer resources depending on the relative benefits to each child and the costs, since each child has the same percentage of the parent's genes.  But each child shares only fifty percent of their genes with their siblings so should aim to get resources until the benefit to the others is twice the cost to the child.  And the parent may keep back some resources for allocation to further planned offspring.  A variety of conflicts ensue:
  • In the womb the fetus tries to capture nutrients from the mother at the expense of future children.  It ties up the mother's insulin to increase the blood sugar available to it and placing the mother at risk of diabetes.  Fathers can assist their offspring in this 'fight with the mother' by supplying imprinted genes that help the offspring capture resources. 
    
  • At birth mothers must decide whether to let the baby die.  This practice is cross cultural but is considered a depravity by present Western culture.  That is probably due to the West having captured a majority of the world's resources for centuries.  
  • Infants use cuteness to encourage parental investment.  A mother's attachment delays until it is clear that the baby will live.  
  • Infants cry to demand milk.  Until weaned the mother won't ovulate limiting her future reproductive potential. 
    
  • Young children are in conflict with their father over access to their mother. 
    
  • Children are in a position to develop paradoxical tactics to push for more resource allocation. 
    
  • Older children may have sexual conflicts with their parents, especially their fathers.  Fathers compete with sons for sexual partners in many societies.  But this competition is not for their mother.  
  • Adult children may conflict with their parents over allocation of family resources.  This has led to murder. 
    
  • Parents attempt to train children to assist the parent's social interests.  The implication is that children are wary of their parent's suggestions and typically pay more attention to the advice of their peer group according to Judith Harris.  
  • Parents sell or trade their children.  The price paid for a daughter will likely depend on her virginity.  Hence fathers take an interest in their daughters' sexuality.  
  - which occurs because parents and offspring don't have exactly the same genes. 
  
• Intersexual genetic conflict - where tournament species males and females fight arms races, in a war where both sides use the strategy of development and use of advanced weapon systems to gain an advantage, each advance induces the other side to respond with its own asymmetric advances.  Neither side will necessarily gain the upper hand in which case the weapon systems themselves advance rapidly with little direct benefit for the combatants. 
  with imprinted genes operate differently depending from which parent they originate.  Such genes may only be activated if they come from the father, or the mother.  Harvard evolutionary biologist David Haig realized there was an arms race between the parents.  Sapolsky describes an example where some paternal genes code for highly active growth factors while the maternal genes code for unresponsive ones.  A paternally derived gene expressed in the brain makes newborns more avid nursers.  The maternal gene counters this.  Tournament species select for imprinted genes while pair-bonding species don't. 
  . 
  

• Clan fighting occurs - but many wars show evidence of families fighting on both sides. 
  
• Intra-family individual violence occurs
• Patricide occurs, typically as revenge for abuse and fratricide. 
  
• Parents killing children because of mental illness, abuse that unintentionally turned fatal
• Money is bequeathed to non-kin.  Sapolsky judges that our cognitive based kin assessment helps explain these situations.  If you 'feel' like a relative to me you are a relative.  And we can be manipulated into feeling more or less related to someone than we really are. 
  

Us Versus Them

• Within 50 milliseconds exposure to a face of someone from a different race: Activates the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  , Inhibits activation of the fusiform is a region of the brain which supports advanced mechanisms of shape recognition and implements the early stages of reading.  Subliminal priming with words did not depend on the shape of the word.  The fusiform gyrus was able to process the abstract identity of a word without caring if it was upper or lower case.   While high up in the cortex it can operate below the level of conscious experience.  It contributes to social emotions with:
  
  • Its face area being more activated by faces with in-group skin color.  
  • It activating when shown pictures of cars in automobile aficionados. 
    
  • It activating when shown pictures of birds in birdwatchers; since it really recognizes examples of items from an individual's emotionally salient categories. 
    
  .  
• At a similar speed the brain groups faces by: Gender, Social status; 
• Oxytocin is a peptide hormone which makes humans more prosocial to and socially competent in their in-group and more antisocial to everyone else.  The effects are contingent; changing during stress and in the presence of a threatening outgroup.  Oxytocin makes people look at eyes longer, encouraging improved accuracy at perceiving emotions.  It enhances activity in the TPJ supporting modeling of other people's thinking.  Dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin increasing the amount of eye contact between them.  It is associated with pair bonding.  It is central to female mammals wanting to nurse, nursing, and remembering their child.  Its effects are context dependent and so is the regulation of the genes that control oxytocin.  Variants of a gene CD38 which facilitates oxytocin secretion from neurons are associated with differing levels of activation of the fusiform face area when looking at faces.  Sapolsky describes an oxytocin receptor gene variant that is associated with children showing: Extreme aggression, A callous unemotional style; foreshadowing adult psychopathy.  And another receptor gene variant which is associated with childhood social disconnection and unstable adult relationships.  Gene/environment interactions complicate the interpretation of the presence of particular gene variants.  Hypothalamic neurons send projections to: ventral tegmentum which also becomes more receptive during child birth, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, amygdala where it inhibits the central amygdala suppressing fear & anxiety consistently in men while still allowing women to respond to threats to their infants, frontal cortex, olfactory network where it helps new rat mums to learn the smell of their offspring; where oxytocin prepares the brain for in-group bonding, out-grouping, birth and maternal behavior.  Outside the brain hypothalamic neurons in females send oxytocin to the posterior pituitary where it enters the blood stream stimulating uterine contraction during labor & supporting milk production for weaning.  Disorders associated with oxytocin abnormalities include ASD. 
  exaggerates 'Us' versus 'Them': promotes trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions.  During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up. 
  , generosity, cooperation with 'Us' but negative acts to 'Them'.  

• Threatening [to the hierarchy], angry is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. 
  , untrust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions.  During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up. 
  worthy; is seen consistently.  Or
  
• Disgusting is a universal human emotion.  Pinker notes it has its own facial expression and is codified in food taboos.  The mind must be associated with the proximate environment and parents minimize the risk for their omnivorous children by teaching them what foods to eat and what to avoid.  The children's minds are initially receptive to trying all foods but their brains subsequently lock in on the foods they have experienced.  These parental choices are affected by schematic influence on what has been beneficial.  Adolescent's brain developments undermine these constraints enabling intergroup transfers.  Disgust is modulated by the insula cortex which projects signals to the amygdala. 
  , where we add moral and aesthetic to most animal's basic gustatory disgust.  'Us' versus 'Them' markers enable the insula is part of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus.  It includes: anterior, posterior insula; and is overlaid by the operculum.  It is assumed to participate in consciousness where it has been linked to emotion, salience & body homeostasis functions:
  
  • Perception,
    
  • Motor control: Hand-&-eye motor movement, Swallowing, Gastric motility, Speech articulation;
    
  • Self-awareness,
    
  • Inter-personal experiences: Disgust at smells, contamination & mutilation which generate visceral responses, that are projected to the amygdala; binding physical and moral aspects of purity (Macbeth effect)
    
  • Homeostatic regulation of the sympathetic network, parasympathetic network, and immune system.   
  to become active.  Establishing that 'They' eat disgusting things assists with deciding that 'They' also have disgusting ethical ideas.  People with a low threshold for interpersonal disgust have strong out-group views.  
• Ridiculous
• An emotionally simple homogeneous group with less sensitivity to pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so.  Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US.  .  Rather than individuals they are an interchangeable, immutable, primitive, icky essence.  This essentialism thrives with bad relations or few interactions with the out-group.  
• Out-grouping is emotion are low level agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal.  The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus.  The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions.  Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals.  Because of this emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful.  Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna.  Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Disgust, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism.   based with limited cognitive is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. 
  cover added [later] if necessary.  
• The conscious judgments about 'Them' are manipulated in experiments by primes: 'loyalty' or 'equality'; and in real world situations.  
• Groups tend to be more hostile than individuals.  But hostile intergroup relations tend to correlate with reduced intragroup hostility. 
  

• Multiple categories of 'Us' and crucially which 'Us' is most important constantly shifts. 
  
• Taxonomies of 'Them' - 
• Race intuitions are broad based and cross cultural but are folk-science.  Race is a biological continuum, not a discrete category.  Hunter-gatherers would be unlikely to meet people of different skin color.  And the clasifications vary by culture not biology.  Classifications can evaporate rapidly depending on circumstance.  
• Fiske's stereotype content model of Fiske argues there are two axes used to classify out-groups: Warmth - is the individual or group a friend or enemy, nice or nasty? Competence - how effective are they at performing their goal?  Sapolsky explains this model results in 'Us' being judged warm and competent and viewed with pride while homeless drug-addicts are judged cold and incompetent and disgusting.  The elderly and handicapped are classified as warm and incompetent and are pitied.  Ruling classes are typically judged cold but competent by the rest and are envied. 
  
  suggests we classify 'Them' according to warmth and competence.  Sapolsky notes that turning a group from low warmth & high competence to low warmth low competence accounts for some of the worst documented human savagery.  Different types of 'Them' evokes different feelings in us anchored in the neurobiology of fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. 
  and disgust is a universal human emotion.  Pinker notes it has its own facial expression and is codified in food taboos.  The mind must be associated with the proximate environment and parents minimize the risk for their omnivorous children by teaching them what foods to eat and what to avoid.  The children's minds are initially receptive to trying all foods but their brains subsequently lock in on the foods they have experienced.  These parental choices are affected by schematic influence on what has been beneficial.  Adolescent's brain developments undermine these constraints enabling intergroup transfers.  Disgust is modulated by the insula cortex which projects signals to the amygdala. 
  . 
  
• 'Us' versus 'Them' while feeling badly and concealing it - Kenneth & Mamie Clark's "doll studies" showed young children with IAT biases towards valuing the dominant group.  Careful suppression of revealing ones actual categorization depends on suppression by the PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
  • The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.  It evolved most recently.  During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.  The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior.  Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice.  The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions.  It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory.  It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels.  It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.  Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it.  Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.  
  . 
  
• Cultural mechanisms that alter the sharpness of 'Us' versus 'Them' - Cuing and priming alter 'Them' categorizations.  It is easier to manipulate warmth than competency ratings.  The rank order of our multiple 'Us' versus 'Them' catagories allows automatic shifting: Race to shirt color, Math performance association with gender or ethnicity.  Increasing the significance of hierarchies can leverage stereotypes of high warmth low competency or low warmth low competency of Fiske argues there are two axes used to classify out-groups: Warmth - is the individual or group a friend or enemy, nice or nasty? Competence - how effective are they at performing their goal?  Sapolsky explains this model results in 'Us' being judged warm and competent and viewed with pride while homeless drug-addicts are judged cold and incompetent and disgusting.  The elderly and handicapped are classified as warm and incompetent and are pitied.  Ruling classes are typically judged cold but competent by the rest and are envied. 
  
  increases 'Them'ing.  But individuals respond differently to the signals based on: SDO is social-dominance orientation which is:
  • How much someone values: Status and dominance.  
  & RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) is:
  • An assessment of how much a person values centralized authority, the rule of law, and convention. 
    
  • Has been experimentally correlated with low IQ.  Sapolsky explains simple answers are ideal for people with poor abstract reasoning skills. 
  .  High-SDO people's prejudices increase the most under threat, accept bias against low-status out-groups and males tolerate sexism. 
  

Hierarchy, Obedience, and Resistance

• In other species
  
• Early in life;  & 

• Our alpha individuals may be chosen
  
• Alpha individuals are not only of high rank but also vie to be leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
  , promoting different political ideologies.  
• Humans express obedience to an authority & to the idea of authority. 
  

Nature and varieties of hierarchies

• Provide benefits to individuals within them: No risk of injury if conflict is resolved by rank, high dominance individuals gain access to more resources. 
  
• Can be stable depending on situation.  Brains use different networks to handle stable and unstable situations.  
• Female baboons stay with their kin is a strategy of selfish genes, which aims to maximize gene survival & replication across all the bodies where a copy of the gene probably exists: relatives.  Altruism is beneficial to gene replication in this situation.  Love supports the agent's prioritization of appropriate altruistic strategies.  Sapolsky describes an array of strategies used to identify kin:
  • Genetically shaped pheromonal signatures.  Rodents leverage the immune systems MHC super variable gene regions to develop unique signals.  The more similar the signals are the closer is the relative.  Pregnancy triggers adult neurogenesis in the olfactory system of rat mothers to allow them to learn the smell of their newborn.
  • Imprinting on the female whose birdsong a chick heard while still in the egg
  • Degree of paternalism depending on likelihood of being the father in primates
    
  • Humans use cognition
    
  and inherit their rank.  So they know the region where they hunt.  It is the old experienced females that know where they are going, so others follow. 
  
• Provide efficient conflict resolution guidelines
• Can be simple: Marmosets have an alpha and everyone else; or
  
• Graduated: baboons & ravens - who both attend to signals about rank in their own and adjacent groups and model expected outcomes.  Baboons interact differently depending on the other baboons rank. 
  
• May differ by gender
• While female baboons inherit their rank, for males, who join the group as adolescents in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment.  And it is staged encouraging the adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen.  It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development.  The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively.  The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time.  The rest dissolve.  So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal.  The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first.  The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult.  Adolescents:
  • Don't detect irony effectively.  They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.  
  • Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup.  Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards.  Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack.  Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor.  The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards.  Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting.  And adolescents start to see other people's perspective. 
    
  • Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females.  Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.  
  • Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents.  Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity.  Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.  
  • Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego.  But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations. 
    
  , rank is captured by fighting and threats, and is maintained by social skills. 
  
• Will differ depending on social group dynamics: Fission-fusion come together for some activities and split apart for others.  Social complexity is higher in fission-fusion species which require bigger brains to cope.  Examples include:
  • Baboons spend the morning, evening and night in a large structured group.  But they forage at midday in small groups.  Fission-fussion primates include: baboons, chimps, bonobos, orangutans, spider monkeys. 
    
  • Hyenas hunt in groups but scavenge individually
  • Wolfs scavenge in groups but hunt individually
  presents situations of additional social complexity and so supports
  This page reviews the implications of selection, variation and heredity in a complex adaptive system (CAS).  The mechanism and its emergence are discussed. 
  
  evolution of a bigger neocortex is the main part of the cerebral cortex in mammals.  It was originally thought to exist only in mammals but is also present in reptiles and birds buried behind other areas of the for-brain.  The for-brain develops based on a genetic plan consistent across all vertebrates.  The neocortex processes vision in the visual hierarchy V1, V2, V3 .. V5 ... V20; and language with areas including Wernicke's and Broca's with sensors in the inner ear.  Primate species with bigger social groups have larger cortices.  Human cortex size suggests traditional human cultures had an average size of 150 people. 
  .  The larger the group is, the more the PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
  • The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.  It evolved most recently.  During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.  The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior.  Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice.  The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions.  It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory.  It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels.  It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.  Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it.  Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.  
  and superior temporal gyrus is involved in:
  
  • Auditory processing including the primary auditory cortex that maps sound frequencies, and Wernicke's area
  • Social cognition including: theory of mind. 
    
  thicken and couple. 
  

Rank and hierarchy in humans

• Size of group network can be large and expand the vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  , orbital PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
  • The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.  It evolved most recently.  During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.  The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior.  Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice.  The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions.  It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory.  It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels.  It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.  Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it.  Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.  
  , amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  and theory of mind of mind is the capability of adults, and even young children, to see that others think and perceive the world differently to them.  It typically develops around age three to four.  It supports the child's development of empathy.  It is associated with the DMPFC, precuneus, superior temporal sulcus & temporoparietal junction.  Subsequently more capabilities appear including: Understanding a second person's theory of mind about a third person, Perspectives and Irony.   related skills. 
  
• Rank inequalities occur but vary by culture is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  and power dynamics. 
  

• Membership in multiple hierarchies - which can overlap and conflict. 
  
• The specialization of some ranking systems - while high ranking chimps generally excel at related areas, humans specialize deeply and build hierarchies around these subcultures.  It is not obvious these skills generalize. 
  
• Internal standards that don't depend on the real world
  

The view from the top, the view from the bottom

• Detecting rank - takes only 40 milliseconds from facial signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance.  In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively.  A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form.  Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell.  Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state.  Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals.  Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich.  Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors.  In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation.  To be credible signals must be hard to fake.  To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient.  To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy. 
  and is also detected rapidly from our body position.  The vlPFC is ventrolateral prefrontal cortex
  & dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
  • At the heart of decision making - highly rational, unsentimental 
  • A major agent of working memory
    
  • The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.  
  • Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.  
  activate and couple together when a dominant face is detected probably indicating mating goals are being evaluated.  And we are interested in what dominant individuals are thinking - the superior temporal gyrus is involved in:
  
  • Auditory processing including the primary auditory cortex that maps sound frequencies, and Wernicke's area
  • Social cognition including: theory of mind. 
    
  increases its coupling to the PFC is prefrontal cortex which is:
  • The front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.  It evolved most recently.  During adolescence when the PFC is still deploying, older brain agents provide equivalent strategies: ventral striatum.  The PFC has been implicated in planning, working memory: dorsolateral; decision making: Orbitofrontal cortex; and social behavior.  Different PFC circuits track internal reward driven strategies and externally signalled advice.  The PFC chooses between conflicting options, letting go or restraint, especially between cognition and emotions.  It imposes an overarching strategy for managing working memory.  It is essential for thinking about multiple items with different labels.  It includes neurons that are interested in particular sub-categories: Dog, Cat.  Once it has made a decision it signals the rest of the frontal lobe just behind it.  Glucocorticoids decrease excitability of the PFC.  
  .  If the hierarchy is unstable the amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  activates as well.  And infants can detect rank too.  Gossip is an evolved mechanism to enforce: fairness, indirect reciprocity, and avoidance of despotism.  It allows: reality testing, transfer of news, and consensus building; to maintain norms. 
  is mostly about the status of our hierarchy. 
  
• Your brain and your own status - recursively interact, with dlPFC excitability supporting and being supported by high rank. 
  
• Your body and your own status - Sapolsky notes testosterone is a hormone secreted by the testes in response to stimulation from the hypothalamic/pituitary/testicular cascade, that makes humans more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status, according to Sapolsky.  That means players of the Ultimatum Game, if previously given testosterone can become more generous.  Testosterones effect is highly socially contextual so it may encourage acts of kindness or aggression (when challenged).  The level of testosterone does not predict which individuals will be aggressive in: Birds, Fish, Mammals including primates.  Genes impact the potency of testosterone by altering the enzymes that: Construct it, Convert it to estrogen, code the androgen receptor.   This androgen receptor includes a variable polyglutamine repeat which alters the sensitivity to the testosterone signal.  The more potent form is associated with boys showing more dramatic 'masculinization' of the cortex.  But the detected genetic influences are small.  Testosterone decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex and its functional coupling to the amygdala while increasing the coupling between the amygdala & the thalamus.  Testosterone shortens the refactory period of amygdaloid & amygdaloid target neurons.  This results in impulsive risk taking and more focus on unfamiliar faces and distrust of them.  Testosterone increases activity in the ventral tegmentum projecting dopamine to enhance place preference.  Winners of fights become more willing to fight in part due to testosterone increasing confidence and optimism and reducing fear and anxiety.  And winning at: Chess, Athletics, Stock trades; induces the BNST to add testosterone receptors increasing its sensitivity to the hormone.  People become overconfident and overly optimistic. 
  level and high-rank don't correlate in stable hierarchies.  Challenge raises the testosterone level during unstable times.  Alpha baboons are also stressed is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  due to having to defend their rank and their access to females.  Low-ranking in baboons leads to elevated long-term stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  levels when the alphas displace aggression and there are no displacement or grooming activities for the subordinates, which Sapolsky sees as resembling the learned helplessness of human depression is a debilitating state which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels; and an accumulation of traumatic events.  There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015).  The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure.  Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past.  It affects 12% of men and 20% of women.  It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016).  Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression.  Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease.   It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016).  During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling.  There is an association between depression and particular brain regions: Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Abnormalities of the ACC.  Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable.  Treatments include: CBT, UMHS depression management.  As of 2010 drug treatments take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony.   Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult;.  But he notes that these stress effects are filtered by personality differs in at least five key ways:
  • Extroversion-introversion - whether the person gains energy from socializing or retiring
    
  • Neuroticism-stability - does a person worry or are they calm and self-satisfied
    
  • Agreeableness-antagonism - is a person courteous & trusting or rude and suspicious
    
  • Conscientiousness-un-directedness - is a person careful or careless
    
  • Openness-non-openness - are they daring or conforming
    
  and social effectiveness. 
  

• When subjects viewed people in emotional pain the level of empathy is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective.  It is implemented by spindle neurons.  It is context dependently mediated by estrogen.  It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them.  In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC.  If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured.  The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help.  But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC.  In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures.  Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people.  By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala.  Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do.  But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is.  Sociopaths do not develop empathy.   and disgust is a universal human emotion.  Pinker notes it has its own facial expression and is codified in food taboos.  The mind must be associated with the proximate environment and parents minimize the risk for their omnivorous children by teaching them what foods to eat and what to avoid.  The children's minds are initially receptive to trying all foods but their brains subsequently lock in on the foods they have experienced.  These parental choices are affected by schematic influence on what has been beneficial.  Adolescent's brain developments undermine these constraints enabling intergroup transfers.  Disgust is modulated by the insula cortex which projects signals to the amygdala. 
  at the circumstance varied inversely with the subject's SDO is social-dominance orientation which is:
  • How much someone values: Status and dominance.  
  .  
• High status is a publically accepted, signal that one possesses assets: wealth, beauty, talent, expertise, access & trust of powerful people; to be able to help others. 
  reduced anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards.  Major anxiety results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density.  Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women.  Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. 
  & glucocorticoids are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  as long as the lower ranks did not directly report to the subject.  

A really odd thing that we do now and then

• Consciously identify as broadly experienced & competent. 
• Automatically & unconsciously
  
• The orbitofrontal PFC is a rich club hub region of the prefrontal cortex, involved in representing emotion & reward in decision-making.  It is positioned immediately above the orbits where the eyes sit.  The medial part judges the beauty of faces, minds and acts and will conflate them in social emotion evaluations.  The orbitofrontal cortex receives projections from the: hippocampus & associated areas of the cingulate, retrosplenial & entorhinal cortices, anterior thalamus, amygdala, midline thalamus, non-isocortical insula, mediodorsal thalamus.   selects the better-looking candidate.  
• Bias towards candidates who speak on everyone's behalf. 
  
• During war time we prefer older, more masculine faces, but in peace time more feminine faces. 
  
• During times of building cooperation more intelligent faces are preferred, but not at other times.  
• From early in life, indicating these are generalized deeply entrenched biases. 
  

Oh, Why not take this one on? Politics and political orientations

• The internal consistency of political orientation - social, economic is the study of trade between humans.  Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system.  Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics.  Marx developed an alternative static approach.  Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics.  Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.  , environmental, international; suggesting an underlying stable ideology that is a manifestation of intellectual and emotional style.  
  
• Implicit factors underlying political orientation -
  
• Intelligence - low IQ has been correlated with RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) is:
  • An assessment of how much a person values centralized authority, the rule of law, and convention. 
    
  • Has been experimentally correlated with low IQ.  Sapolsky explains simple answers are ideal for people with poor abstract reasoning skills. 
  . 
  
• Intellectual style - Research concludes: Conservatives don't like ambiguity, Liberals have greater capacity for integrative complexity - shifting from fast to slow thinking given time; Sapolsky concludes liberals are more motivated to spend the time working towards situational explanations.  And adding cognitive load or distractions includes the impact of hard thinking by the frontal cortex.  As the frontal lobe works to enforce its willpower it becomes difficult for the body to deliver on its metabolic demands.  As the frontal lobe weakens the overall effect is for an individual to become more aggressive, less charitable, less honest.  The lack of metabolic resources acts as an interoceptive signal to the frontal cortex. 
  makes us all more conservative.  Sapolsky notes parole judges grant at 60% after eating but 0% just before! 
  
• Moral cognition - Sapolsky notes that liberals differ from conservatives on their position on Kohlberg's staged model of moral development defines a three stage moral process:
  1. Preconventional reasoning (until age 8 - 10) initially allows aggression.  But around two to four years old adult and peer punishment inhibits the use of aggression.  And subsequently rewards become significant in the decision process.  When these judgements about aggression don't change at age 8 - 10 it predicts increasing risk of adult sociopathy.  For the others post conflict reconciliation decreases glucocorticoid levels and anxiety. 
     
  2. Conventional reasoning (adolescents and adults) reviews the consequences to others and if they are friends, as well as what others would likely do.  Being well regarded is also significant.  The law becomes significant in the later stage of this phase. 
     
  3. Post conventional reasoning (Inspiring heroes & insufferable pedants) first increases the value of self-judgement when judging rules.  And beyond this are moral acts valued because they represent a position more important than a law. 
     
  .  Liberals acceptance of civil disobedience motivates them to work to move up the stages.   Similarly how they value Haidt's six foundations of morality of morality are: (1) Care versus harm, (2) Fairness versus cheating, (3) Liberty versus oppression, (4) Loyalty versus betrayal, (5) Authority versus subversion, (6) Sanctity versus degradation; with liberals valuing the first three while conservatives strongly value 4 to 6. 
  separates liberals from conservatives. 
  
• Affective psychological differences - Ambiguity & novelty make conservatives anxious is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards.  Major anxiety results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density.  Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women.  Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. 
  .  So conservatives want to return to former glories unlike liberals.  And this supports an emphasis on loyalty, obedience and law.  Sapolsky suggests impoverished whites vote Republican to maintain stability, limit change and threatening uncertainty, driven by fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. 
  , anxiety and worries about mortality.  
• And of course, some underlying biology
• Political orientation about social issues reflects the insula is part of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus.  It includes: anterior, posterior insula; and is overlaid by the operculum.  It is assumed to participate in consciousness where it has been linked to emotion, salience & body homeostasis functions:
  
  • Perception,
    
  • Motor control: Hand-&-eye motor movement, Swallowing, Gastric motility, Speech articulation;
    
  • Self-awareness,
    
  • Inter-personal experiences: Disgust at smells, contamination & mutilation which generate visceral responses, that are projected to the amygdala; binding physical and moral aspects of purity (Macbeth effect)
    
  • Homeostatic regulation of the sympathetic network, parasympathetic network, and immune system.   
  driven sensitivity to visceral disgust is a universal human emotion.  Pinker notes it has its own facial expression and is codified in food taboos.  The mind must be associated with the proximate environment and parents minimize the risk for their omnivorous children by teaching them what foods to eat and what to avoid.  The children's minds are initially receptive to trying all foods but their brains subsequently lock in on the foods they have experienced.  These parental choices are affected by schematic influence on what has been beneficial.  Adolescent's brain developments undermine these constraints enabling intergroup transfers.  Disgust is modulated by the insula cortex which projects signals to the amygdala. 
  and strategies for coping with such disgust.  Conservatives feel disgust is a good metric for judging morality provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
  .  But Sapolsky notes what is disgusting shifts over time. 
  
• Conservatism is associated with an enlarged amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  . 
  
• Liberalism is associated with larger amounts of the gray matter in the 'empathetic is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective.  It is implemented by spindle neurons.  It is context dependently mediated by estrogen.  It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them.  In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC.  If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured.  The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help.  But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC.  In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures.  Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people.  By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala.  Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do.  But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is.  Sociopaths do not develop empathy.  ' cingulate is the cingulate gyrus, a rich club hub.  Contains many sub-parts:
  
  • The anterior cingulate cortex ACC:
  • Is a central focus of empathy supporting people relating to other's pain.  This is dependent on oxytocin. 
    
  • In non-human mammals it processes interoceptive signals.  The ACC focuses the internal signals into high level 'gut intuitions.'  Pain catches the ACC's attention. 
    
  • Performs discrepancy detection from the outcome that was predicted - at a high level.  The ACC cares about the meaning of what is predicted. 
    
  • If the ACC has been convinced that a pain killer placebo has inhibited pain signals, the ACC will stay silent about actual pain that is signalled from interoceptive networks.  
  • The ACC will signal: physical pain, emotional pain, metaphorical pain, anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, social exclusion especially in adolescence; as one and the same.  The ACC's abnormalities being associated with major depression. 
    
  • Has a bridging role between the empathetic and self-interested pain monitor.  Sapolsky notes the ACC is essential for learning fear and conditioned avoidance by observation alone through an intermediate step of shared representation of self.  He concludes "At its core the ACC is about self-interest, with caring about the other person in pain as an add-on." 
    
  • The midcingulate cortex was formerly judged part of the 'emotional' limbic system in MacLean's discredited triune brain model. 
    
  . 
  
• No demonstrable genetic influence tied to political orientation yet. 
  

Obedience and conformity, disobedience and nonconformity

• Roots - Sapolsky notes both conformity and obedience have deep roots being present in other species.  Chimps are impressed and learn actions when three of the group each performs the actions.  And they will use the leader aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
  's strategy in preference to some other actions.  Humans register the rest of the group has chosen a different strategy to themselves within 200 milliseconds and within less than 380 milliseconds an activation profile indicates change of opinion. 
• Neural bases - conforming and obedience match the benefits of fitting in: mesolimbic dopamine includes projections between the tegmentum and the accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus;
  activation.  Being out of step activates: amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  , insula is part of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus.  It includes: anterior, posterior insula; and is overlaid by the operculum.  It is assumed to participate in consciousness where it has been linked to emotion, salience & body homeostasis functions:
  
  • Perception,
    
  • Motor control: Hand-&-eye motor movement, Swallowing, Gastric motility, Speech articulation;
    
  • Self-awareness,
    
  • Inter-personal experiences: Disgust at smells, contamination & mutilation which generate visceral responses, that are projected to the amygdala; binding physical and moral aspects of purity (Macbeth effect)
    
  • Homeostatic regulation of the sympathetic network, parasympathetic network, and immune system.   
  ; and hearing of the disagreement with others activates the: vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  , ACC is either the
  
  • Anterior cingulate cortex which:
  • Is a central focus of empathy supporting people relating to other's pain.  This is dependent on oxytocin. 
    
  • In non-human mammals it processes interoceptive signals.  The ACC focuses the internal signals into high level 'gut intuitions.'  Pain catches the ACC's attention. 
    
  • Performs discrepancy detection from the outcome that was predicted - at a high level.  The ACC cares about the meaning of what is predicted. 
    
  • If the ACC has been convinced that a pain killer placebo has inhibited pain signals, the ACC will stay silent about actual pain that is signalled from interoceptive networks.  
  • The ACC will signal: physical pain, emotional pain, metaphorical pain, anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, social exclusion especially in adolescence; as one and the same.  The ACC's abnormalities being associated with major depression. 
    
  • Has a bridging role between the empathetic and self-interested pain monitor.  Sapolsky notes the ACC is essential for learning fear and conditioned avoidance by observation alone through an intermediate step of shared representation of self.  He concludes "At its core the ACC is about self-interest, with caring about the other person in pain as an add-on." 
    
  • American College of Cardiology
    
  , nucleus accumbens is a region of the basal forebrain rostral to the preoptic area and immediately adjacent to the septum.  The nucleus accumbens was closely associated with the limbic system and plays an important role in reinforcement.  If a rodent wins a fight on his home territory, there are long-lasting increases in levels of testosterone receptors enhancing pleasurable effects.  When prairie voles first mate, epi-genetic state changes are induced in the accumbens to support pair-bonding.  The accumbens projects to brain regions associated with movement.  The major pathways of dopaminergic neurons begin in the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area.  The amygdala projects back to the accumbens.  The tegmentostriatal system begins in the ventral tegmental area and projects to the nucleus accumbens.  The nucleus accumbens includes high levels of D1, D2 and D3 dopamine receptors located on the spine & shafts of dendrites of excitatory cells reduce the transfer of excitation from the dendrites to the cell bodies, so only especially strong excitatory inputs get through to the cell body to elicit excitation.  It also has D4 dopamine receptors which are highly variable.  The accumbens responds differently to rewards depending on maturity: In juveniles all reward levels result in the same response activity level, During adolescence the accumbens responds to small rewards negatively, and large rewards hugely, In adults the rewards result in measured scaled positive responses.  Chronic stress depletes dopamine from the nucleus accumbens biasing humans towards depression.  ; warning that your wrong. 
• Asch, Milgram, and Zimbardo - Three experiments that show situation matters & that some normal people can be coerced into doing terrible things.  Asch's famous line length matching study showed how groups could influence the subject to conform to a wrong selection 30% of the time.  Milgram showed subjects would inflict pain on another human when told to do so by an authority figure in a uniform.  Zimbardo got Stanford college students to dress & behave as guards and prisoners with resulting brutality to and degradation of the prisoners. 
  
• Situational forces and what lurks in all of us - Zimbardo concluded that a bad barrel can turn all the apples bad.  He argued for a public health approach to blocking such environments. 
  
• Some different takes - Psychologists became outraged at what the subjects had been manipulated to do. And Zimbardo's role as superintendent, where he set the rules, raises concerns.  Without him the prison experiment has not replicated accurately.  Sapolsky stresses that some apples don't go bad. 
• Modulators of the pressures to conform and obey include:
  
• The nature of the authority or group pressing for conformity
• What is being required and in what context
• The nature of the victim - once they are known personally they are less likely to be victimized 
  
• Things brought to the table by the person being pressured - not valuing conscientiousness, not valuing RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) is:
  • An assessment of how much a person values centralized authority, the rule of law, and convention. 
    
  • Has been experimentally correlated with low IQ.  Sapolsky explains simple answers are ideal for people with poor abstract reasoning skills. 
  . 
  
• Stress - threats and time pressure undermine resistance
  
• Alternatives - Another actor going against the group will help break the force to conform
  

Morality and Doing the Right Thing, Once You've Figured Out What That Is

• The primacy of reasoning in moral decision making - Sapolsky notes all societies introduce rules about moral and ethical behavior.  Applying the rules leverages trained lawyers and requires building scenarios, identifying proximate and distant causes of events and estimating magnitudes & probabilities of consequences of
  Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents.  This page discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
  It then presents examples of agents in different CAS.  The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents.  These software agents are aggregates. 
  The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined. 
  
  actions.  Perspectives must be developed using theory of mind of mind is the capability of adults, and even young children, to see that others think and perceive the world differently to them.  It typically develops around age three to four.  It supports the child's development of empathy.  It is associated with the DMPFC, precuneus, superior temporal sulcus & temporoparietal junction.  Subsequently more capabilities appear including: Understanding a second person's theory of mind about a third person, Perspectives and Irony.  .  But he asserts child development anchors our assumptions prioritizing the primacy of reason.  Logic and Moral reasoning both activate the dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
  • At the heart of decision making - highly rational, unsentimental 
  • A major agent of working memory
    
  • The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.  
  • Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.  
  . 
• Yeah, sure it is: social intuitionism - Assertions of morality being founded on reason suffer because from experiments people are found to use rapid implicit assessments anchored in emotion: amygdala contains > 12 distinct areas: Central, Lateral.  It receives simple signals from the lower parts of the brain: pain from the PAG; and abstract complex information from the highest areas: Disgust from the insula cortex.  It sends signals to almost every other part of the brain, including to the decision-making circuitry of the frontal lobes.  It has high levels of D(1) dopamine receptors.  During extreme fear the amygdala drives the hippocampus into fear learning.  It outputs directly to subcortical reflexive motor pathways when speed is required.  Its central nucleus projects to the BNST.  It signals the locus ceruleus.  The amygdala:
  
  • Promotes aggression.  Stimulating the amygdala promotes rage.  It converts anger into aggression and when impaired it impacts the ability to detect angry facial expressions.  
  • Participates in disgust
  • Perceives fear promoting stimuli.  In PTSD sufferers the Amygdala overreacts to mildly fearful stimuli and is slow to calm down and the amygdala expands in size over a period of months.  Fear is processed by the lateral nucleus which serves as the input from various senses, and the central nucleus which outputs to the brain stem (central grey - freezing, lateral hypothalamus - blood pressure, activates paraventricular hypothalamus => crf -> hormone adjustments). 
    
  • Has lots of receptors for and is highly sensitive to glucocorticoids.  Stress inhibits the GABA interneurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) allowing the excitatory glutamate releasing neurons to excite more. 
    
  • Is sensitive to unsettling/uncertain social situations where it promotes anxiety.  It is also interested in uncertain but potentially painful situations.  The amygdala contributes to social and emotional decision making where the BLA supports rejecting an unacceptable offer, as allowed in the Ultimatum Game, by injecting implicit mistrust and vigilance, generating an anger driven rejection that is used as punishment.  The amygdala is very rapidly excited by subliminal signals from the thalamus of outgroup skin color.  The amygdala subsequently tips social emotions against outgroups unless restrained by the frontal lobe or influenced by subliminal priming to prioritize inclusion.  The fast path from the thalamus rapidly but inaccurately signals its identified a weapon. 
    
  • Promotes male, but not female, sexual motivation when it is an uncertain potential pleasure. 
    
  • Responds to the longing for uncertain potential pleasures and fear that the reward will not be worth it if it happens.  The amygdala turns off during orgasm. 
    
  • Uses but is not directly involved in vision. 
    
  , vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  , orbitofrontal cortex is a rich club hub region of the prefrontal cortex, involved in representing emotion & reward in decision-making.  It is positioned immediately above the orbits where the eyes sit.  The medial part judges the beauty of faces, minds and acts and will conflate them in social emotion evaluations.  The orbitofrontal cortex receives projections from the: hippocampus & associated areas of the cingulate, retrosplenial & entorhinal cortices, anterior thalamus, amygdala, midline thalamus, non-isocortical insula, mediodorsal thalamus.  , insula is part of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus.  It includes: anterior, posterior insula; and is overlaid by the operculum.  It is assumed to participate in consciousness where it has been linked to emotion, salience & body homeostasis functions:
  
  • Perception,
    
  • Motor control: Hand-&-eye motor movement, Swallowing, Gastric motility, Speech articulation;
    
  • Self-awareness,
    
  • Inter-personal experiences: Disgust at smells, contamination & mutilation which generate visceral responses, that are projected to the amygdala; binding physical and moral aspects of purity (Macbeth effect)
    
  • Homeostatic regulation of the sympathetic network, parasympathetic network, and immune system.   
  , ACC is either the
  
  • Anterior cingulate cortex which:
  • Is a central focus of empathy supporting people relating to other's pain.  This is dependent on oxytocin. 
    
  • In non-human mammals it processes interoceptive signals.  The ACC focuses the internal signals into high level 'gut intuitions.'  Pain catches the ACC's attention. 
    
  • Performs discrepancy detection from the outcome that was predicted - at a high level.  The ACC cares about the meaning of what is predicted. 
    
  • If the ACC has been convinced that a pain killer placebo has inhibited pain signals, the ACC will stay silent about actual pain that is signalled from interoceptive networks.  
  • The ACC will signal: physical pain, emotional pain, metaphorical pain, anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, social exclusion especially in adolescence; as one and the same.  The ACC's abnormalities being associated with major depression. 
    
  • Has a bridging role between the empathetic and self-interested pain monitor.  Sapolsky notes the ACC is essential for learning fear and conditioned avoidance by observation alone through an intermediate step of shared representation of self.  He concludes "At its core the ACC is about self-interest, with caring about the other person in pain as an add-on." 
    
  • American College of Cardiology
    
  ; and post-hoc rationalizations.  Otherwise environment: Hunger, dirty desk or bad odor would not alter judgments. 
  
• Again with babies and animals - there is additional support for implicit assessments indicating human morality transcends our species boundaries. 
  
• Mr. Spock and Joseph Stalin - Sapolsky notes that while philosophers and Star Trek's Mr. Spock want morality to be logical Joseph Stalin understood that relatives are special.  That holds true except for people with vmPFC damage who are then happy to harm kin. 
  

Context

• But this circumstance is different - Sapolsky sees context dependency enabling most of us to use special circumstances to justify our own bad behavior.  The vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  is activated in reviewing our own moral failings inducing shame is an emotional reaction to being discovered cheating on a friend. 
  & guilt is an emotion which alerts us to the risk of cheating on a friend.  To be culturally effective the individuals must have respect for the law. 
  while for others the insula is part of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus.  It includes: anterior, posterior insula; and is overlaid by the operculum.  It is assumed to participate in consciousness where it has been linked to emotion, salience & body homeostasis functions:
  
  • Perception,
    
  • Motor control: Hand-&-eye motor movement, Swallowing, Gastric motility, Speech articulation;
    
  • Self-awareness,
    
  • Inter-personal experiences: Disgust at smells, contamination & mutilation which generate visceral responses, that are projected to the amygdala; binding physical and moral aspects of purity (Macbeth effect)
    
  • Homeostatic regulation of the sympathetic network, parasympathetic network, and immune system.   
  & dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
  • At the heart of decision making - highly rational, unsentimental 
  • A major agent of working memory
    
  • The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.  
  • Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.  
  activate - feeling anger is an emotion which protects a person who has been cheated by a supposed friend.  When the exploitation of the altruism is discovered, Steven Pinker explains, the result is a drive for moralistic aggression to hurt the cheater. 
  and indignation.  For personal moral issues only, additional stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  results in emotional egoistic rationalizing judgments.  Sapolsky stresses the analogy to us versus them and sees this ability to forgive our bad actions as very significant and hard to deter. 
  
• Cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  Context - also has a huge influence on moral provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
  context.  Sapolsky notes it is a complex and large subject so he focuses on to three subjects: 
• Cooperation and competition - Herrmann's studies of public good is an economic experiment, run by Herrmann et al., where players, from around the world, have tokens which they can share or keep to themselves over a series of rounds.  Shared tokens are multiplied and shared evenly among all players.  And players could 'pay' to punish others for the size of their contribution.  So players can do best if they alone keep their tokens and everyone else share.  They will perform worst if they share but no one else does.  Herrmann found:
  • Across all cultures, people were more prosocial than it was rational to be.  
  • Some cultures used antisocial punishment because they force everyone to contribute more.  
  • There was a correlation between antisocial punishment and low social capital in the culture. 
    
  found all cultures to be more prosocial is prioritizing benefiting others through: Help, Charity, Truth; even if many are acts of restitution to balance out antisocial acts.  Due to the Insula's binding of physical and metaphorical disgust, physically washing your hands can be enough to reduce the need for a prosocial act.  
  than was rational.  But different cultures used antisocial punishment is where someone is punished for being overly generous.  People from Greece and Oman, where there is low social capital, were particularly likely to do this. 
  to differing extents.  People in cultures with low social capital is the collective quantity of resources such as trust, reciprocity & cooperation according to Sapolsky.   used antisocial punishment most often feeling they don't trust one another and feel they have no efficacy. 
  
• Honor is a doomsday machine emotional signal, which Pinker explains as an advertisement of the desire to publically avenge even minor trespasses and insults.   and revenge - monotheistic warrior pastoralist cultures differ on moral response to personal affronts. 
  
• Shamed collectivists and guilty individualists - contrast by different approaches to the morality of ends & means:
  
• Social roles and duties to the group versus individual rights.  
• Different enforcement with collectivists using shame is an emotional reaction to being discovered cheating on a friend. 
  before an audience and individualists using guilt is an emotion which alerts us to the risk of cheating on a friend.  To be culturally effective the individuals must have respect for the law. 
  .  Sapolsky notes that gossip is an evolved mechanism to enforce: fairness, indirect reciprocity, and avoidance of despotism.  It allows: reality testing, transfer of news, and consensus building; to maintain norms. 
  leverages shame to allow the weak to attack the powerful.  In particular he asserts the legally enforced psychopathic personality of corporations is restrained by shame.  And he notes the worrying increase in influence of shame, amplified by the anonymous hate speech of the Internet. 
  

Fools rush in: applying the findings of the science of morality

• Which dead white male was right? He looks for the optimal moral provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
  philosophy reviewing the three schools: Virtue ethics identifies culture relative habitually enabled character traits such as Aristotle's list: Moral: Courage, Temperance, Liberality, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Proper ambition, Truthfulness, Wittiness, Friendliness, Modesty, Righteous indignation; Intellectual: Intelligence, Science, Theory; Good sense, Understanding, Practical wisdom, Craftsmanship; that a person can practice to achieve a state of living a proper life.  It emphasizes the agent and assumes guilt will help. 
  - you the
  Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents.  This page discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
  It then presents examples of agents in different CAS.  The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents.  These software agents are aggregates. 
  The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined. 
  
  agent are a better person and will respond to guilt is an emotion which alerts us to the risk of cheating on a friend.  To be culturally effective the individuals must have respect for the law. 
  , Deontology judges the morality of an action by rules.  Bentham coined the term to mean the knowledge of what is right and proper.  The rules can be universal, religious or cultural and there is an obligation to obey them.  Its moral intuitions about trolley problems focus on the vmPFC, amygdala and insula. 
  - emphasizes the act and leverages the
  This page discusses the physical foundations of complex adaptive systems (CAS).  A small set of rules is obeyed.  New [epi]phenomena then emerge.  Examples are discussed. 
  
  rule , Consequentialism argues that the consequences (outcome) of ones actions are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the morality of the conduct.  Mohist consequentialism argues outcomes that are good for the community outweigh the importance of individual pleasure and pain in contrast to Bentham's utilitarian aggregate happiness.  There are other forms.  Consequentialism's moral intuitions about trolley problems focus on the dlPFC and moral reasoning. 
  - focuses on the implications of the outcome; with our automatic, intuitive moral judgments shaped by evolution to help spread our genes.  Consistently 30% of trolley problem is British philosopher Philippa Foot's thought experiment in ethics, which asks if you have the opportunity to switch the tracks ahead of a runaway trolley car so that it kills one person instead of the five on the main track should you: Do nothing or Pull the lever and kill the one.  Foot asks what would be the most ethical choice.   subjects are deontologists refusing to save the five lives, 30% were utilitarian (consequentialists) pulling the lever and pushing the person, for the rest moral philosophy was context dependent.  Sapolsky notes that the mind's architecture demonstrates this balancing act between the vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  & the dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
  • At the heart of decision making - highly rational, unsentimental 
  • A major agent of working memory
    
  • The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.  
  • Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.  
  that allow us to consider difficult short and long term trade-offs is Antonio Damasio's proposal that the limbic system can help guide the vmPFC's choice of options by running internal simulations of what the alternative outcomes will feel like. 
  and unintended consequences.  And he asserts that moral intuitions reflect habitual learning of important cognitive conclusions based on cultural beliefs.  
• Slow and fast: The separate problems of "Me Versus Us" and "Us Versus Them" - Josh Greene used the tragedies of the commons reflects the lack of incentive for individuals to cooperate to sustain a common good when there is no immediate disincentive, even when over time the result will be collapse of the resource base sustaining the group.  Josh Greene notes the issue is how to jump-start and maintain cooperation.  Sapolsky notes evolution has solved this problem by leveraging bootstrapping processes and helping groups to discourage individuals being selfish.  Institutions: religion, nationalism, ethnic pride, team spirit; provide green-beard markers to support this process. 
  and commonsense morality is Josh Greene's label for how cultural disagreements about who is righter, result in most intergroup conflict.  Each group has loaded moral significance on their strategies and priorities, which conflict with the out-group.  Greene concludes 'right' is a post-hoc rationalization defending a self-serving, parochial moral intuition. 
  to explore these.  Sapolsky notes that the tragedy of commonsense morality is so terrible because everyone can feel that 'They' are deeply wrong because our cultural is how we do and think about things, transmitted by non-genetic means as defined by Frans de Waal.  CAS theory views cultures as operating via memetic schemata evolved by memetic operators to support a cultural superorganism.  Evolutionary psychology asserts that human culture reflects adaptations generated while hunting and gathering.  Dehaene views culture as essentially human, shaped by exaptations and reading, transmitted with support of the neuronal workspace and stabilized by neuronal recycling.  Sapolsky argues that parents must show children how to transform their genetically derived capabilities into a culturally effective toolset.  He is interested in the broad differences across cultures of: Life expectancy, GDP, Death in childbirth, Violence, Chronic bullying, Gender equality, Happiness, Response to cheating, Individualist or collectivist, Enforcing honor, Approach to hierarchy; illustrating how different a person's life will be depending on the culture where they are raised.  Culture:
  • Is deployed during pregnancy & childhood, with parental mediation.  Nutrients, immune messages and hormones all affect the prenatal brain.  Hormones: Testosterone with anti-Mullerian hormone masculinizes the brain by entering target cells and after conversion to estrogen binding to intracellular estrogen receptors; have organizational effects producing lifelong changes.  Parenting style typically produces adults who adopt the same approach.  And mothering style can alter gene regulation in the fetus in ways that transfer epigenetically to future generations!  PMS symptoms vary by culture. 
    
  • Is also significantly transmitted to children by their peers during play.  So parents try to control their children's peer group.  
  • Is transmitted to children by their neighborhoods, tribes, nations etc. 
    
  • Influences the parenting style that is considered appropriate. 
    
  • Can transform dominance into honor.  There are ecological correlates of adopting honor cultures.  Parents in honor cultures are typically authoritarian. 
    
  • Is strongly adapted across a meta-ethnic frontier according to Turchin.  
  • Across Europe was shaped by the Carolingian empire. 
    
  • Can provide varying levels of support for innovation.  
  • Produces consciousness according to Dennet. 
    
  institutions: religion, nationalism, ethnic pride, team spirit; that help green-beards genes code for expressing an evolved signal, such as a green-beard, and cooperating with other "green-beard displaying" people.  Humans can adjust how we view these signals and so how we define us and them.   make the commons work, drive our worst behaviors in confronting 'Thems' and their different morals provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
  .  Sapolsky concludes that to find the best in 'Us Versus Them' it is important to think, reason, and question, making the thinking slow and iterative.  
• Veracity and Mendacity - Sapolsky argues the context dependent good or bad impacts of telling lies and the truth make the biology of honesty and duplicity very muddy.  The nature of investigates the optimal strategies for cooperating.  The iterative Prisoner's Dilemma scenario was shown by Axelrod & Hamilton to reward a Tit for Tat strategy with perfect signals.  An effective way to limit the risks of initiating Tit for Tat in a potential sea of Always Defectors is a genetically encoded signal of cooperation such as the green-beard gene.  Other evolved strategies include genetic algorithms.    competitive evolutionary games selects for deception and watching for it.  Nonhuman primates have developed sophisticated tactics to game other group members.  The larger the neocortex is the main part of the cerebral cortex in mammals.  It was originally thought to exist only in mammals but is also present in reptiles and birds buried behind other areas of the for-brain.  The for-brain develops based on a genetic plan consistent across all vertebrates.  The neocortex processes vision in the visual hierarchy V1, V2, V3 .. V5 ... V20; and language with areas including Wernicke's and Broca's with sensors in the inner ear.  Primate species with bigger social groups have larger cortices.  Human cortex size suggests traditional human cultures had an average size of 150 people. 
  , the higher the rates of deception, independent of group size!  But Sapolsky asserts only humans consciously strategize and feel morally troubled when they act on the strategies: Our facial muscles have the most complex innervation and use massive amounts of motor neurons to control them, We have language allowing us to build distance between the signal and its meaning, We can cognitively is the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals according to Princeton's Jonathan Cohen. 
  finesse the truth as long as we can rationalize to make doing so feel less dishonest; using the dlPFC is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is:
  • At the heart of decision making - highly rational, unsentimental 
  • A major agent of working memory
    
  • The most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex.  
  • Mainly interconnected with other parts of the cortex.  
  and regions involved in theory of mind of mind is the capability of adults, and even young children, to see that others think and perceive the world differently to them.  It typically develops around age three to four.  It supports the child's development of empathy.  It is associated with the DMPFC, precuneus, superior temporal sulcus & temporoparietal junction.  Subsequently more capabilities appear including: Understanding a second person's theory of mind about a third person, Perspectives and Irony.  .  Compulsive liers have increased white matter and less grey matter.  The ACC is either the
  
  • Anterior cingulate cortex which:
  • Is a central focus of empathy supporting people relating to other's pain.  This is dependent on oxytocin. 
    
  • In non-human mammals it processes interoceptive signals.  The ACC focuses the internal signals into high level 'gut intuitions.'  Pain catches the ACC's attention. 
    
  • Performs discrepancy detection from the outcome that was predicted - at a high level.  The ACC cares about the meaning of what is predicted. 
    
  • If the ACC has been convinced that a pain killer placebo has inhibited pain signals, the ACC will stay silent about actual pain that is signalled from interoceptive networks.  
  • The ACC will signal: physical pain, emotional pain, metaphorical pain, anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, social exclusion especially in adolescence; as one and the same.  The ACC's abnormalities being associated with major depression. 
    
  • Has a bridging role between the empathetic and self-interested pain monitor.  Sapolsky notes the ACC is essential for learning fear and conditioned avoidance by observation alone through an intermediate step of shared representation of self.  He concludes "At its core the ACC is about self-interest, with caring about the other person in pain as an add-on." 
    
  • American College of Cardiology
    
  is involved in these conflicting emotional choices - monitoring the conflict between reality and the lie and slowing down the thought process slightly.  Sapolsky notes that transcranial direct-current stimulation shows the dlPFC drives the lie.  And it is involved in pushing to be honest.  People who were capable of cheating used the dlPFC, vmPFC is ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is:
  • Focused on the impact of emotion on decision making
    
  • A participant in limbic system operations 
  • Many human behaviors involve interactions between the vmPFC, the limbic system & the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Part of decision making is for the limbic system to internally simulate (often with the help of the sympathetic nervous system) what alternative outcomes of a decision will feel like with the results of these somatic marker analyses being reported to the vmPFC.  
    
  • Damage to the vmPFC results in bad decision making: Poor judgement in choosing friends & partners, Failure to respond to negative feedback; because they can't feel the issues. 
    
  and ACC to evaluate whether not to lie.  But people who never cheat did not depend on cortical evaluation.  They had practiced and automatized doing the right thing -- virtue ethics identifies culture relative habitually enabled character traits such as Aristotle's list: Moral: Courage, Temperance, Liberality, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Proper ambition, Truthfulness, Wittiness, Friendliness, Modesty, Righteous indignation; Intellectual: Intelligence, Science, Theory; Good sense, Understanding, Practical wisdom, Craftsmanship; that a person can practice to achieve a state of living a proper life.  It emphasizes the agent and assumes guilt will help. 
  . 
  

Feeling Someone's Pain, Understanding Someone's Pain, Alleviating Someone's Pain

"For" versus "as if" and other distinctions

Emotionally contagious, compassionate animals

• Show mimicry,
  
• Show emotional contagion where the emotion can transfer to other actions. 
  
• Have socially learned fear is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful.  The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger.  There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. 
  conditioning. 
  
• Bullying is a complex childhood adversity.  Sapolsky explains that targets of bullying aren't selected at random.  And bullies often come from families with single mothers or younger parents with low educational and economic prospects.  Sapolsky notes that someone who bullies and is also bullied is likely to be a real mess as an adult. 
  elevates glucocorticoid are corticosteroids which bind the glucocorticoid receptor.  They decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.  They have adverse effects in fetal/infant development having organizational effects on fetal brain construction and decreasing levels of: growth factors, neurons, synapses; resulting in an adult brain that is more sensitive to environmental triggers of depression and anxiety.  Glucocorticoids affect gene control structures and induce epi-genetic changes.  They have been found associated with high sodium chloride consumption (May 2017). 
  levels and anxiety is manifested in the amygdala mediating inhibition of dopamine rewards.  Major anxiety results in elevated glucocorticoids and reduces hippocampal dendrite & spine density.  Some estrogen receptor variants are associated with anxiety in women.  Michael Pollan concludes anxiety is fear of the future. 
  in mice for weeks after the event.  Even mice who were just observing the bullying. 
  
• Pain amplifies the aggression response of people by interoceptive signalling of brain regions providing social emotions including the PAG projecting to the amygdala; making aggressive people more so and less aggressive people less so.  Pain is the main reason people visit the ED in the US.   sensitivity increased in mice when they observed other mice that were in pain. 
  
• Console a fight victim that did not start the aggression: chimps, bonobos, wolves, dogs, elephants, and corvids.  Prairie voles will lick & groom their partner if it has been stressed is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels.  Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight.  As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate.  A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance.  The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis. 
  
  • The short term response to the stressor
    
  • activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response.  The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated.  The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail.  But when the stressor is
    
  • long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues.  Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in.  Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status.  It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition.  Sustained stress:
    
  • Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment! 
    
  • Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala. 
    
  • Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful. 
    
  • BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning. 
    
  • Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory.  Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala.  And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces.  Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers.  A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand.  The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds. 
    
  • Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression. 
    
  • Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive.  It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.  
  • Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017) 
  • During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.  
  • Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness. 
    
  .  

Emotionally contagious, compassionate children

• Children develop theory of mind of mind is the capability of adults, and even young children, to see that others think and perceive the world differently to them.  It typically develops around age three to four.  It supports the child's development of empathy.  It is associated with the DMPFC, precuneus, superior temporal sulcus & temporoparietal junction.  Subsequently more capabilities appear including: Understanding a second person's theory of mind about a third person, Perspectives and Irony.   on their way to empathy is the capability to relate to another person from their perspective.  It is implemented by spindle neurons.  It is context dependently mediated by estrogen.  It develops over time: Piaget's preoperational stage includes rudimentary empathy, Theory of mind supports the development; initially feeling someone's pain as one integrated being, then for them and eventually as them.  In adults, when someone else is hurt the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala & insula activates projecting [scapegoating] to the vmPFC.  If the pain is physical the PAG activates and motor neurons for the area where the other person was injured.  The intertwining of the ACC amygdala & insula in adults results in attribution of fault even when there is none which can make it hard to step in and actually help.  But in seven-year-olds the activation is concrete: PAG and sensory & motor cortexes with minimal coupling to the rudimentary vmPFC.  In older children the vmPFC is coupled to limbic structures.  Ten to twelve year olds abstract empathy to classes of people.  By adolescence the vmPFC is coupled to theory of mind regions and intentional harm induces disgust via the amygdala.  Sapolsky explains adolescent boys are utilitarian and tend to accept inequality more than girls do.  But both sexes accept inequality as the way it is.  Sociopaths do not develop empathy.   and abstraction.  And sensory motor contagion becomes empathic states for physical and then emotional pain.  

Affect and/or cognition?

A mythic leap forward 

The core issue: Actually Doing Something

• Being in an empathetic state does not guarantee a compassionate act because it can become an endpoint itself or is so powerful as to turn the person's focus inward.  The ACC is either the
  
  • Anterior cingulate cortex which:
  • Is a central focus of empathy supporting people relating to other's pain.  This is dependent on oxytocin. 
    
  • In non-human mammals it processes interoceptive signals.  The ACC focuses the internal signals into high level 'gut intuitions.'  Pain catches the ACC's attention. 
    
  • Performs discrepancy detection from the outcome that was predicted - at a high level.  The ACC cares about the meaning of what is predicted. 
    
  • If the ACC has been convinced that a pain killer placebo has inhibited pain signals, the ACC will stay silent about actual pain that is signalled from interoceptive networks.  
  • The ACC will signal: physical pain, emotional pain, metaphorical pain, anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, social exclusion especially in adolescence; as one and the same.  The ACC's abnormalities being associated with major depression. 
    
  • Has a bridging role between the empathetic and self-interested pain monitor.  Sapolsky notes the ACC is essential for learning fear and conditioned avoidance by observation alone through an intermediate step of shared representation of self.  He concludes "At its core the ACC is about self-interest, with caring about the other person in pain as an add-on." 
    
  • American College of Cardiology
    
  and insula is part of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus.  It includes: anterior, posterior insula; and is overlaid by the operculum.  It is assumed to participate in consciousness where it has been linked to emotion, salience & body homeostasis functions:
  
  • Perception,
    
  • Motor control: Hand-&-eye motor movement, Swallowing, Gastric motility, Speech articulation;
    
  • Self-awareness,
    
  • Inter-personal experiences: Disgust at smells, contamination & mutilation which generate visceral responses, that are projected to the amygdala; binding physical and moral aspects of purity (Macbeth effect)
    
  • Homeostatic regulation of the sympathetic network, parasympathetic network, and immune system.   
  find this easy.  To catalyze, an infrastructure amplifier.   the compassionate act it is necessary to keep emotional distance.  Buddhists do this by thinking about compassion which activates the mesolimbic dopamine pathway includes projections between the tegmentum and the accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus;
  .  
• Codependency can leverage pathological altruism leading to implicit support for your partner's dysfunction but with a focus on solutions to your own empathy derived concerns.  
• Doing good can feel good.  So compassion may be self-rewarding.  Especially when the act makes things more equitable and is performed voluntarily.  As with morality the prosocial is prioritizing benefiting others through: Help, Charity, Truth; even if many are acts of restitution to balance out antisocial acts.  Due to the Insula's binding of physical and metaphorical disgust, physically washing your hands can be enough to reduce the need for a prosocial act.  
  compassionate act tends to come easiest to a person brought up by parents who were charitable and emphasized charitable acts as a moral provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
  imperative. 
  

Metaphors We Kill By

Feeling someone else's pain

Disgust and Purity

Real versus Metaphorical Sensation

Duct Tape