“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
The frontal cortex is an incredibly interesting part of the brain - ours is proportionately bigger and/or more complex than in any… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Did destruction of the human amygdala lessen aggression? Pretty clearly so, when violence was a reflexive, inchoate outburst preceding a seizure.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
The frontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until age 25, which is wild! — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“stress weakens frontal connections with the hippocampus—essential for incorporating the new information that should prompt shifting to a new strategy—while strengthening frontal… — 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
“Second depressing finding: subliminal signaling of race also affects the fusiform face area, the cortical region that specializes in facial recognition.11 Damaging… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
Brains distinguish between an Us and a Them in a fraction of a second. Subliminal processing of a Them activates the amygdala… — 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
“Moderate, transient stress (i.e., the good, stimulatory stress) promotes hippocampal LTP, while prolonged stress disrupts it and promotes LTD—one reason why cognition… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“THE AMYGDALAfn8 IS the archetypal limbic structure, sitting under the cortex in the temporal lobe. It is central to mediating aggression, along… — 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
“someone’s hand being poked with a needle, and subjects have an “isomorphic sensorimotor” response—hands tense in empathy. Among both whites and blacks,… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“LeDoux and others have shown how auditory information about the tone stimulates BLA neurons. At first, activation of those neurons is irrelevant… — 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
“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
“Moreover, sustained stress and glucocorticoid exposure enhance LTP and suppress LTD in the amygdala, boosting fear conditioning, and suppress LTP in the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“So if whites see a black face shown at a subliminal speed, the amygdala activates.10 But if the face is shown long… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Glutamate signaling works in a fancier way that is essential to learning.2 To simplify considerably, while dendritic spines typically contain only one… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“This brings up a key concept, namely the inverted U. The complete absence of stress is aversively boring. Moderate, transient stress is… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“in adults the anterior cingulate cortex activates when they see someone hurt. Ditto for the amygdala and insula, especially in instances of… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Joseph LeDoux at New York University has shown how the BLA learns fear.fn14,20 Expose a rat to an innate trigger of fear—a… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“When you get the news that everyone else disagrees with you, there is also activation of the (emotional) vmPFC, the anterior cingulate… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Diallo, a West African immigrant in New York, matched a description of a rapist. Four white officers questioned him, and when the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“in adults the anterior cingulate cortex activates when they see someone hurt. Ditto for the amygdala and insula, especially in instances of… — 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
“how acute stress strengthens connectivity between the frontal cortex and motoric areas, while weakening frontal-hippocampal connections; the result is decision making that… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Most broadly, the PFC chooses between conflicting options—Coke or Pepsi; blurting out what you really think or restraining yourself; pulling the trigger… — 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
“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
“Chapter 3 discusses some unsettling research—stick your average person in a brain scanner, and show him a picture of someone of another… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“It’s not until the non-NMDA has been stimulated over and over by a long train of glutamate release, allowing enough sodium to… — 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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
