Robert M. Sapolsky

Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez.

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“And their brains? Decreased total brain size, gray matter, white matter, frontal cortical metabolism, connectivity between regions, sizes of individual brain regions.…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

If you care about your longevity and health, be a socially affiliated baboon who is better than high-ranking ones at walking away…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for "good stress." For one person, it's…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“here’s a highly simplified version of the next chapter’s focus on genes: (a) each gene specifies the production of a specific type…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Knutson’s group shows that the greater the probability of reward, the more activation in the medial PFC.96 But switches from 50 to…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

The regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.

— Robert M. Sapolsky

Oxytocin is lauded for how it promotes warmth, generosity, social bonding, cooperation, trust, and compassion.

— Robert M. Sapolsky

Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Everything in physiology follows the rule that too much can be as bad as too little. There are optimal points of allostatic…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Thus, over the course of seconds sensory cues can shape your behavior unconsciously.”

— Robert M. Sapolsky

Almost always, genes are about potentials and vulnerabilities rather than about determinism.

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“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

“The sensory cortex and visual cortex are far away from each other. How do those tactile neurons “know” (a) that there’s vacant…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Moreover, when people are hungry, they become less charitable and more aggressive (e.g., choosing more severe punishment for an opponent in a…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“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

“math performance in Asian American women, built around the stereotypes of Asians being good at math, and women not. Half the subjects…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

How much you groom somebody else is more important than who grooms you.

— Robert M. Sapolsky

To out-group-members, oxytocin makes you crappier - less cooperative and more preemptively aggressive. It's not the luv hormone. It's the in-group parochialism/xenophobia…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Memory can be dramatically disrupted if you force something that’s implicit into explicit channels. Here’s an example that will finally make reading…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“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

“Men with more “masculine” 2D:4D ratios tend toward higher levels of aggression and math scores; more assertive personalities; higher rates of ADHD…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Suppose a person harmed people two generations ago; are this person’s grandchildren obliged to help his victims’ grandchildren? Subjects viewed a biological…

— Robert M. Sapolsky