“In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Sustained stress has numerous adverse effects. The amygdala becomes overactive and more coupled to pathways of habitual behavior; it is easier to… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“you asked amygdala experts what behavior their favorite brain structure brings to mind, “aggression” wouldn’t top their list. It would be fear… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“The most convincing data concern rare humans with damage restricted to the amygdala, either due to a type of encephalitis or a… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“During sustained stress, the amygdala processes emotional sensory information more rapidly and less accurately, dominates hippocampal function, and disrupts frontocortical function; we’re… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Moving beyond mere correlation, if you lesion the amygdala in an animal, rates of aggression decline. The same occurs transiently when you… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Powerful support for an amygdaloid role in fear processing comes from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In PTSD sufferers the amygdala is overreactive… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Stick recording electrodes into numerous species’ amygdalaefn9 and see when neurons there have action potentials; this turns out to be when the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Logically, when the amygdala wants to mobilize a behavior—say, fleeing—it talks to the frontal cortex, seeking its executive approval. But if sufficiently… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Instead, these findings suggest that the amygdala injects implicit distrust and vigilance into social decision making.23 All thanks to learning. In the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“Finally, for the same criminal conviction, the more stereotypically Af-rican a black individual’s facial features, the longer the sentence.15 In contrast, juries view black… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“So testosterone does subtle things to behavior. Nonetheless, this doesn’t tell us much because everything can be interpreted every which way. Testosterone increases anxiety—you… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“In other words, the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“The subject of one experiment is a rat that receives mild electric shocks (roughly equivalent to the static shock you might get from scuffing… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“No brain region is an island, and the formation of circuits connecting far-flung brain regions is crucial—how else can the frontal cortex use its… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“Most broadly, the PFC chooses between conflicting options—Coke or Pepsi; blurting out what you really think or restraining yourself; pulling the trigger or not.… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“One stretch of the gene is repeated a variable number of times, and the version with seven repeats (the “7R” form) produces a receptor… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“some people always get more than their share of equality than others” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
