Behavioral Neuroscience Quotes

Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.

Among life’s cruellest truths is this one: wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition.

The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.

The purpose of all of this (left hemisphere's way of choosing denial or repression over considering an anomaly) is to impose stability on behavior and to prevent vacillation because indecisiveness doesn't serve any purpose. Any decision, so long as it is probably correct, is better than no decision at all. A perpetually fickle general will never win a war.

A victim of virtually any disease usually elicits pity, addicts mostly evoke revulsion. What is it about the irrational behavior of an addict that makes everyone want to turn away?

neuroscience confirms that storytelling has unique power to change opinions and behavior.

We cannot do without reality and we cannot do without illusion. Each serves a purpose, each imposes a limit on the influence of the other, and our experience of the world is the artful compromise that these tough competitors negotiate.

The bottom line is this: the brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

One way or another we are all biased, but still we have the modern cortical capacity to choose whether or not to let the harmful biases dictate our behavior.

Own your biases, don't be owned by them.

The philosophers Liam Clegg and Daniel Dennett have argued that human behavior is inherently unpredictable not just because of random neural noise in the brain but as an adaptation that makes it harder for our rivals to outguess us.

Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it were your last, which only goes to show that some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The

If you have to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be "it's complicated.

Nothing has more power over a man than a woman's tears.

Man’s earliest prereligious fear of the natural forces gradually became religious in nature and got personalized and spiritualized. Eventually he learnt to say 'God works in a mysterious way'.

A huge portion of the human society runs on autopilot, under the authority of biases. That's why, the world is infested with so many conflicts. Once the humans get hold of their biases instead of letting their biases get hold of them, all conflicts would vanish into thin air.

Primitive humans could not comprehend the vastness of infinity and eternity, so as a trick of self-preservation they came up with the perception of survival of the soul after death and its recurring incarnations.

Anxiety is a complex emotional response that’s similar to fear. Both arise from similar brain processes and cause similar physiological and behavioral reactions; both originate in portions of the brain designed to help all animals deal with danger. Fear and anxiety differ, however, in that fear is typically associated with a clear, present, and identifiable threat, whereas anxiety occurs in the absence of immediate peril.

Every single human being is neurologically predisposed to be biased in various walks of life. It is biologically impossible to be absolutely free from all biases, nevertheless, the more a person rigorously trains the self to be rational and conscientious, the more that self becomes strong enough to keep the biases in check, never to let them run rampant over the psyche.

The systems we will be exploring in order are: ● Breeding Targets: Arousal patterns tied to systems meant to get our ancestors to have sex with things that might bear offspring (e.g., arousal from things like penises, the female form, etc.). ● Inverse Systems: Arousal patterns that arise from a neural mix-up, causing something that disgusts the majority of the population to arouse a small portion of it (e.g., arousal from things like being farted on, dead bodies, having insects poured on one’s face, etc.). ● Emotional States and Concepts / Dominance and Submission: Arousal patterns that stem from either emotional concepts (such as betrayal, transformation, being eaten, etc.) or dominance and submission pathways. ● Emotional Connections to People: While emotional connections do not cause arousal in and of themselves, they do lower the threshold for arousal (i.e., you may become more aroused by a moderately attractive person you love than a very attractive stranger). ● Trope Attraction: Arousal patterns that are enhanced through a target’s adherence to a specific trope (a nurse, a goth person, a cheerleader, etc.). ● Novelty: Arousal patterns tied to the novelty of a particular stimulus. ● Pain and Asphyxiation: Arousal patterns associated with or enhanced by pain and oxygen deprivation. ● Basic Instincts: Remnants of our pre-cognitive mating instincts running off of a “deeper” autopilot-like neurological system (dry humping, etc.) that compel mating behavior without necessarily generating a traditional feeling of arousal. ● Physical Stimuli: Arousal patterns derived from physical interaction (kissing, touching an erogenous zone, etc.). ● Conditioned Responses: Arousal patterns resulting from conditioning (arousal from shoes, doorknobs, etc.).

But intelligence is not just a matter of acting or behaving intelligently. Behavior is a manifestation of intelligence, but not the central characteristic or primary definition of being intelligent. A moment's reflection proves this: You can be intelligent just lying in the dark, thinking and understanding. Ignoring what goes on in your head and focusing instead on behavior has been a large impediment to understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines

The word experience comes from the Latin experientia, meaning ‘to try’, whereas the word aware comes from the Greek horan, meaning ‘to see’. Experience implies participation in an event, whereas awareness implies observation of an event.

Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed.

We expect the next car, the next house or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn’t

We are not merely spectators of the world but investors in it,

most people do pretty well when things go pretty bad.

Later! What an astonishing idea. What a powerful concept. What a fabulous discovery.

We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world.

We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy.

The key to happiness, fulfilment and enlightenment, the ex-professor argued, was to stop thinking so much about the future.

Indeed, feelings don’t just matter–they are what mattering means.

We don’t always see ourselves as superior, but we almost always see ourselves as unique. Even when we do precisely what others do, we tend to think that we’re doing it for unique reasons.

Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends.

Our spiritual traditions have carried virtues across time. They are tools for the art of living. They are pieces of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images: what we practice, we become. What’s true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. I’ve come to think of virtues and rituals as spiritual technologies for being our best selves in flesh and blood, time and space. There are superstar virtues that come most readily to mind and can be the work of a day or a lifetime—love, compassion, forgiveness. And there are gentle shifts of mind and habit that make those possible, working patiently through the raw materials of our lives.

Therefore, reading and reacting to other people’s behaviors, emotions, and attitudes have been hardwired into our brains. We are not only wired to connect, but we are also wired to attune to, resonate with, and learn from others.

I know that psychology and neuroscience have to work in concert if we want to address the full range of human behavior, and I really do love the idea of the whole animal, but I guess my question is that if the brain can't account for things like reason and emotion, then what can? If the brain makes it possible for 'us' to feel and think, then what is 'us'? Do you believe in souls? I was breathless.

It has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn’t made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain!

Sometimes, humanity surprises me with all its lack of control over the primordial urges. These innate urges are the biological traits that make us similar to the rest of the animal kingdom. But the modern qualities that make us superior to all the animals are intellect and self-control.

Stanford University's psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues have discovered that what you believe about intellectual ability—whether you think it's a fixed gift, or an earned ability that can be developed—makes a difference to your behavior, persistence, and performance. Students who see ability as fixed—as a gift—are more vulnerable to setbacks and difficulties. And stereotypes, as Dweck rightly points out, "are stories about gifts—who has them and who doesn't." Dweck and her colleagues are shown that when students are encouraged to see math ability as something that grows with effort—pointing out, for example, that the brain forges new connections and develops better ability every time they practice a task—grades improve and gender gaps diminish (relative to groups given control interventions).

The human mind has a primordial affinity towards ideas of miracles and mysticism, especially, in times of weakness.

Humanism is not a single character. It is a magnificent blend of various emotional and behavioral traits that are unique to the human mind.

Fundamentalism not only fuels devastating acts of violence, but also all kinds of primitive prejudicial behaviors, such as Misogyny, Polygamy, Homophobia, and Islamophobia.

The human brain always concocts biases to aid in the construction of a coherent mental life, exclusively suitable for an individual’s personal needs.

We use our eyes to look into space and our imaginations to look into time.

memory does not store a feature-length film of our experience but instead stores an idiosyncratic synopsis,

The principles that explain why some genes are transmitted more successfully than others also explain why some beliefs are transmitted more successfully than others.

MOST OF US MAKE at least three important decisions in our lives: where to live, what to do and with whom to do it.

This is when I learned that mistakes are interesting and began planning a life that contained several of them.

We humans are the Tyrannosaurus Rex of mammals.

There is not much difference between a person drunk on alcohol and a person drunk on biases. Both do things, that they wouldn't do, had they not been under the influence.

In everyday life of the common human, reason takes a back seat and emotions dictate all significant behavior.

two or three million years ago our ancestors began a great escape from the here and now, and their getaway vehicle was a highly specialized mass of grey tissue, fragile, wrinkled and appended. This frontal lobe–the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature and the first to deteriorate in old age–is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens. No other animal has a frontal lobe quite like ours, which is why we are the only animal that thinks about the future as we do. But

Because time is such a slippery concept, we tend to imagine the future as the present with a twist, thus our imagined tomorrows inevitably look like slightly twisted versions of today. The reality of the moment is so palpable and powerful that it holds imagination in a tight orbit from which it never fully escapes. Presentism occurs because we fail to recognize that our future selves won’t see the world the way we see it now. As we are about to learn, this fundamental inability to take the perspective of the person to whom the rest of our lives will happen is the most insidious problem a futurian can face.

According to neuroscience research from 2012, it is intrinsically rewarding to talk about oneself. This is perhaps why Facebook, Twitter and blogging platforms like Tumblr have been such successful products.

Human nature is a combination of modern conscience and ancient primitiveness. As the creation of the human mind in a state of transcendence, all scriptures are also a fusion of human conscience and gruesome primitiveness.

Where do the behavioral-cognitive concepts that contemporary cognitive neuroscience operates with come from? The answer is from Aristotle and his heart-centered philosophy, not brain mechanisms. Aristotle’s terms were adopted by the Christian philosophers and were extensively used by both Descartes and the British empiricists John Locke and David Hume. To their credit, they used many of the cognitive expressions only as hypothetical constructs.

Why should caring for others begin with the self? There is an abundance of rather vague ideas about this issue, which I am sure neuroscience will one day resolve. Let me offer my own “hand waving” explanation by saying that advanced empathy requires both mental mirroring and mental separation. The mirroring allows the sight of another person in a particular emotional state to induce a similar state in us. We literally feel their pain, loss, delight, disgust, etc., through so-called shared representations. Neuroimaging shows that our brains are similarly activated as those of people we identify with. This is an ancient mechanism: It is automatic, starts early in life, and probably characterizes all mammals. But we go beyond this, and this is where mental separation comes in. We parse our own state from the other’s. Otherwise, we would be like the toddler who cries when she hears another cry but fails to distinguish her own distress from the other’s. How could she care for the other if she can’t even tell where her feelings are coming from? In the words of psychologist Daniel Goleman, “Self-absorption kills empathy.” The child needs to disentangle herself from the other so as to pinpoint the actual source of her feelings.

The historian Will Durant performed the remarkable feat of summarizing Kant’s point in a single sentence: ‘The world as we know it is a construction, a finished product, almost–one might say–a manufactured article, to which the mind contributes as much by its moulding forms as the thing contributes by its stimuli.

The best way to build rapport with people or companies is to share in their beliefs and behaviors. When we don’t mesh with someone, when he or she rubs us the wrong way, or when we don’t aspire to the same values and passions, we routinely dismiss that person, just as we reject brands that are out of sync with our own lives.

By nature, that mind is easily fooled by supernatural mysticism. It is extremely gullible. And no matter how much we the civilized human beings advance in the fields of modern sciences, there is always a part of us, that tries to allure us with magical nonsense, because that nonsense has been with us since the birth of humanity.

We the experts in cognitive and behavioral sciences can predict human behavior but not human potential. What this means is that, though we can tell how a person is likely to feel, think and behave in a certain situation, we still cannot tell what a person is capable of. Hence the possibilities that a person holds in their neurons are immeasurable.

Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets. Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.

Honeybees possess amazing numerical skills that rival those of many vertebrates. Honeybees have a reputation of being insect geniuses: not only can they enumerate and order numbers, but they also possess elaborate working memory to ponder about upcoming decisions, understand abstract concepts such as 'sameness' and 'difference', and learn intricate skills from other bees. And they achieve all of this with fewer than one million neurons.

Consumption is a universal phenomenon. All humans consume varieties of products, many of which beyond actual necessity, because it activates the brain's reward center. And the more a certain product activates the reward center with its unique characteristics or its predominant social stature, the more that product gets chiseled into the long-term memory of the consumer, making it a fundamental part of the individual's psychological well being. Thus the human mind grows a deep psychological bond with a product. And this bond can grow so strong in time that it would defend itself from all sorts of criticisms. It is the brain's way to maintain its internal purely individualistic well being. Hence, a strong psychological bond between the mind and a product slowly not only becomes invincible to criticisms, but also, develops its own cognitive immune system against such criticisms.

Philosophy is the discipline of human thought that allows us to interpret our experience of ourselves and of the world at large, thereby giving meaning to our existence. While science constructs models of reality that predict the behavior of matter and energy, philosophy asks how those models relate to our condition as conscious entities. Without philosophy, science is merely an enabler of technology; it tells us nothing about the underlying nature of nature.

To tip the cognitive hurdle fast, tipping point leaders such as Bratton zoom in on the act of disproportionate influence: making people see and experience harsh reality firsthand. Research in neuroscience and cognitive science shows that people remember and respond most effectively to what they see and experience: “Seeing is believing.” In the realm of experience, positive stimuli reinforce behavior, whereas negative stimuli change attitudes and behavior. Simply

Now you know that the fascinating phenomenon of love has nothing to do with the supernatural entity known as Cupid, but everything to do with neurochemistry. Likewise, divinity is a cerebral creation, not a supernatural one. And it has been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn’t made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain!

Psychologists have found that the most significant common trait among people who are pulled to the mountains is something called sensation seeking. “Neuroscience calls it novelty, it’s the willingness to take risks for the sake of rewards,” says Cynthia Thomson, a health researcher who looks at behavioral genetics. “Compared to people who don’t ski, skiers are higher on the sensation-seeking scale. They have a low threshold for boredom, and tend to look for more exciting experiences, even if there are dangers associated with them.

Nearly four centuries ago, the philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon wrote about the ways in which the mind errs, and he considered the failure to consider absences among the most serious: By far the greatest impediment and aberration of the human understanding arises from [the fact that]…those things which strike the sense outweigh things which, although they may be more important, do not strike it directly. Hence, contemplation usually ceases with seeing, so much so that little or no attention is paid to things invisible.6

It is much easier to concentrate the mind on external things, than to concentrate on the mind itself. For example, a Neuroscientist can be the smartest man (or woman) on earth in his understanding of the human mind. He may know all the neurochemical changes underlying an outrageous behavior of a person. But when he gets mad himself, very little of his own scientific intellect would actually come in handy for him to control his rage. The virtue of self-control is a skill, which requires practice, regardless of all the neurobiological expertise in the world.

Despite these criticisms of his criticisms, my stance has a major problem, one that causes Morse to conclude that the contributions of neuroscience to the legal system “are modest at best and neuroscience poses no genuine, radical challenges to concepts of personhood, responsibility, and competence.”25 The problem can be summarized in a hypothetical exchange: Prosecutor: So, professor, you’ve told us about the extensive damage that the defendant sustained to his frontal cortex when he was a child. Has every person who has sustained such damage become a multiple murderer, like the defendant? Neuroscientist testifying for the defense: No. Prosecutor: Has every such person at least engaged in some sort of serious criminal behavior? Neuroscientist: No. Prosecutor: Can brain science explain why the same amount of damage produced murderous behavior in the defendant? Neuroscientist: No. The problem is that, even amid all these biological insights that allow us to be snitty about those silly homunculi, we still can’t predict much about behavior. Perhaps at the statistical level of groups, but not when it comes to individuals.

Political economist and sociologist Max Weber famously spoke of the “disenchantment of the world,” as rationalization and science led Europe and America into modern industrial society, pushing back religion and all “magical” theories about reality. Now we are witnessing the disenchantment of the self. One of the many dangers in this process is that if we remove the magic from our image of ourselves, we may also remove it from our image of others. We could become disenchanted with one another. Our image of Homo sapiens underlies our everyday practice and culture; it shapes the way we treat one another as well as how we subjectively experience ourselves. In Western societies, the Judeo-Christian image of humankind—whether you are a believer or not—has secured a minimal moral consensus in everyday life. It has been a major factor in social cohesion. Now that the neurosciences have irrevocably dissolved the Judeo-Christian image of a human being as containing an immortal spark of the divine, we are beginning to realize that they have not substituted anything that could hold society together and provide a common ground for shared moral intuitions and values. An anthropological and ethical vacuum may well follow on the heels of neuroscientific findings. This is a dangerous situation. One potential scenario is that long before neuroscientists and philosophers have settled any of the perennial issues—for example, the nature of the self, the freedom of the will, the relationship between mind and brain, or what makes a person a person—a vulgar materialism might take hold. More and more people will start telling themselves: “I don’t understand what all these neuroexperts and consciousness philosophers are talking about, but the upshot seems pretty clear to me. The cat is out of the bag: We are gene-copying bio- robots, living out here on a lonely planet in a cold and empty physical universe. We have brains but no immortal souls, and after seventy years or so the curtain drops. There will never be an afterlife, or any kind of reward or punishment for anyone, and ultimately everyone is alone. I get the message, and you had better believe I will adjust my behavior to it. It would probably be smart not to let anybody know I’ve seen through the game.

Dr. Jaak Panksepp told me. “If you don’t recognize that the brain creates psychological responses, then neuroscience becomes a highly impoverished discipline. And that’s where the battle is right now. Many neuroscientists believe that mental states are irrelevant for what the brain does. This is a Galileo-type battle, and it will not be won very easily because you have generations and generations of scholars, even in psychology, who have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the notion—the Skinnerian notion—that mentality is irrelevant in the control of behavior.”3 Dr.

Esperanza Impossible Sonnet 30 There is nothing free about your will, All of it is conditioned to the hilt. If you are to foster any original will, A lot of soil you've got to till. Perception is not observation, Perception is prediction. The brain doesn't care about observing, It only puts forward a self-serving illusion. Your will is but puppet to that illusion, Which means you are but a puppet to evolution. You do have the brain power to take control, But it'll take a lot of inconvenient self-correction. If you can do that, you shall rise as sapiens. Or you'll just end up as compost in nature's garden.

Let us begin by giving all proper respect to what neuroscience can tell us about ourselves: it reveals some of the most important conditions that are necessary for behavior and awareness. What neuroscience does not do, however, is provide a satisfactory account of the conditions that are sufficient for behavior and awareness. ... The pervasive yet mistaken idea that neuroscience does fully account for awareness and behavior is neuroscientism, an exercise in science-based faith. ... This confusion between necessary and sufficient conditions lies behind the encroachment of “neuroscientistic” discourse on academic work in the humanities...

Freud elevated unconscious processes to the throne of the mind, imbuing them with the power to guide our every thought and deed, and to a significant extent writing free will out of the picture. Decades later, neuroscience has linked genetic mechanisms to neuronal circuits coursing with a multiplicity of neurotransmitters to argue that the brain is a machine whose behavior is predestined, or at least determined, in such a way as seemingly to leave no room for the will. It is not merely that will is not free, in the modern scientific view; not merely that it is constrained, a captive of material forces. It is, more radically, that the will, a manifestation of the mind, does not even exist, because a mind independent of brain does not exist.

More and more people will start telling themselves: "I don't understand what all these neuroexperts and consciousness philosophers are talking about, but the upshot seems pretty clear to me. The cat is out of the bag: We are gene-copying bio-robots, living out here on a lonely planet in a cold and empty physical universe. We have brains but no immortal souls, and after seventy years or so the curtain drops. There will never be an afterlife, or any kind of reward or punishment for anyone, and ultimately everyone is alone. I get the message, and you had better believe I will adjust my behavior to it. It would probably be smart not to let anybody know I've seen through the game. The most efficient strategy will be to go on pretending I'm a conservative, old-fashioned believer in moral values.

The inhibition of behavior provoked by cat odor is remarkably powerful and long-lasting. As summarized in Figure 1.1, following a single exposure to cat odor, animals continued to exhibit inhibition of play for up to five successive days. Our interpretation of this effect is that some unconditioned attribute of cat smell can innately arouse a fear system in the rat brain, and this emotional state becomes rapidly associated with the contextual cues of the chamber. On subsequent occasions, one does not need the unconditioned fear stimulus—the feline smell—to evoke anxiety. The contextual cues of the chamber suffice. This, in essence, is classical or Pavlovian conditioning. The flow of associations is outlined more formally in Figure 1.2, and as we will see, classical conditioning is still one of the most powerful and effective ways to study emotional learning in the laboratory.

Princess Cookie’s cognitive pathways may have required a more comprehensive analysis. He knew that it was possible to employ certain progressive methods of neural interface, but he felt somewhat apprehensive about implementing them, for fear of the risks involved and of the limited returns such tactics might yield. For instance, it would be a particularly wasteful endeavor if, for the sake of exhausting every last option available, he were even to go so far as resorting to invasive Ontological Neurospelunkery, for this unorthodox process would only prove to be the cerebral equivalent of tracking a creature one was not even sure existed: surely one could happen upon some new species deep in the caverns somewhere and assume it to be the goal of one’s trek, but then there was a certain idiocy to this notion, as one would never be sure this newfound entity should prove to be what one wished it to be; taken further, this very need to find something, to begin with, would only lead one to clamber more deeply inward along rigorous paths and over unsteady terrain, the entirety of which could only be traversed with the arrogant resolve of someone who has already determined, with a misplaced sense of pride in his own assumptions, that he was undoubtedly making headway in a direction worthwhile. And assuming still that this process was the only viable option available, and further assuming that Morell could manage to find a way to track down the beast lingering ostensibly inside of Princess Cookie, what was he then to do with it? Exorcise the thing? Reason with it? Negotiate maybe? How? Could one hope to impose terms and conditions upon the behavior of something tracked and captured in the wilds of the intellect? The thought was a bizarre one and the prospect of achieving success with it unlikely. Perhaps, it would be enough to track the beast, but also to let it live according to its own inclinations inside of her. This would seem a more agreeable proposition. Unfortunately, however, the possibility still remained that there was no beast at all, but that the aberration plaguing her consciousness was merely a side effect of some divine, yet misunderstood purpose with which she had been imbued by the Almighty Lord Himself. She could very well have been functioning on a spiritual plane far beyond Morell’s ability to grasp, which, of course, seared any scrutiny leveled against her with the indelible brand of blasphemy. To say the least, the fear of Godly reprisal which this brand was sure to summon up only served to make the prospect of engaging in such measures as invasive Ontological Neurospelunkery seem both risky and wasteful. And thus, it was a nonstarter.

Essentially, the DMN is responsible for brain activity when a person is focused inward, including during wakeful rest, daydreaming, mind-wandering, and reminiscing. It allows us to carry out self-referential processing, or the ability to reflect on ourselves. In a sense, it is what lets us narrate the “story of oneself,” retrieving and integrating our autobiography stored in our long-term memory and enabling us to take the first-person perspective on that information. It is involved in mental time travel, from recalling past events to envisioning possible events in the future. And it plays a role in how we think about others: considering their thoughts, understanding and empathizing with their emotions, judging whether a behavior is right or wrong, and even perceiving a sense of isolation when we lack social interaction. In our ordinary lives, we experience the workings of the DMN mostly as the incessant chitter-chatter of the mind when it is not occupied with a specific task.

Adding to our understanding of why the brain seems undisturbed by disconnections was not only the notion that it was, in a sense, sending half its decisions into the realm of the unconscious; it was also the discovery of the “interpreter.” This special left brain system kept note of all the behaviors that resulted from the many mental systems. It appeared to be the surveillance camera on our behavior, which, of course, was the evidence that a mental or cognitive act had occurred. The interpreter not only took note; it tried to make “sense” out of the behavior by keeping a running narrative going on about why a string of behaviors was occurring. It is a precious device and most likely uniquely human. It is working in us all the time as we try to explain why we like something or have a particular opinion, or rationalize something we have done. It is the interpreter device that takes the inputs from the massively modularized and automatic brain of ours and creates order from chaos. It comes up with the “makes sense” explanation that leads us to believe in a certain form of essentialism, that is, that we are a unified conscious agent. Nice try, interpreter!

From another corner of neuroscience, we’re learning about a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Though there are more than fifty neurotransmitters (that we know of), scientists studying substance problems have given dopamine much of their attention. The brain’s reward system and pleasure centers—the areas most impacted by substance use and compulsive behaviors—have a high concentration of dopamine. Some brains have more of it than others, and some people have a capacity to enjoy a range of experiences more than others, owing to a combination of genetics and environment. The thing about dopamine is that it makes us feel really good. We tend to want more of it. It is naturally generated through ordinary, pleasurable activities like eating and sex, and it is the brain’s way of rewarding us—or nature’s way of rewarding the brain—for activities necessary to our survival, individually or as a species. It is the “mechanism by which ‘instinct’ is manifest.” Our brains arrange for dopamine levels to rise in anticipation and spike during a pleasurable activity to make sure we do it again. It helps focus our attention on all the cues that contributed to our exposure to whatever felt good (these eventually become triggers to use, as we explain later). Drugs and alcohol (and certain behaviors) turn on a gushing fire hose of dopamine in the brain, and we feel good, even euphoric. Dopamine produced by these artificial means, however, throws our pleasure and reward systems out of whack immediately. Flooding the brain repeatedly with dopamine has long-term effects and creates what’s known as tolerance—when we lose our ability to produce or absorb our own dopamine and need more and more of it artificially just to feel okay. Specifically, the brain compensates for the flood of dopamine by decreasing its own production of it or by desensitizing itself to the neurotransmitter by reducing the number of dopamine receptors, or both. The brain is just trying to keep a balance. The problem with the brain’s reduction in natural dopamine production is that when you take the substance or behavior out of the picture, there’s not enough dopamine in the brain to make you feel good. Without enough dopamine, there is no interest or pleasure. Then not only does the brain lose the pleasure associated with using, it might not be able to enjoy a sunset or a back rub, either. A lowered level of dopamine, combined with people’s longing for the rush of dopamine they got from using substances, contributes to “craving” states. Cravings are a physiological process associated with the brain’s struggle to regain its normal dopamine balance, and they can influence a decision to keep using a substance even when a person is experiencing negative consequences that matter to him and a strong desire to change. Depending on the length of time and quantities a person has been using, these craving states can be quite uncomfortable and compelling. The dopamine system can and does recover, starting as soon as we stop flooding it. But it takes time, and in the time between shutting off the artificial supply of dopamine and the brain’s rebuilding its natural resources, people tend to feel worse (before they feel better). On a deep, instinctual level, their brains are telling them that by stopping using, something is missing; something is wrong. This is a huge factor in relapse, despite good intentions and effort to change. Knowing this can help you and your loved one make it across this gap in brain reward systems.

Educated people, of course, know that perception, cognition, language, and emotion are rooted in the brain. But it is still tempting to think of the brain as it was shown in old educational cartoons, as a control panel with gauges and levers operated by a user — the self, the soul, the ghost, the person, the “me.” But cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems. [C]ognitive neuroscientists have not only exorcised the ghost but have shown that the brain does not even have a part that does exactly what the ghost is supposed to do: review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. Each of us feels that there is a single “I” in control. But that is an illusion that the brain works hard to produce, like the impression that our visual fields are rich in detail from edge to edge. The brain does have supervisory systems in the prefrontal lobes and anterior cingulate cortex, which can push the buttons of behavior and override habits and urges. But those systems are gadgets with specific quirks and limitations; they are not implementations of the rational free agent traditionally identified with the soul or the self.

A Code of Nature must accommodate a mixture of individually different behavioral tendencies. The human race plays a mixed strategy in the game of life. People are not molecules, all alike and behaving differently only because of random interactions. People just differ, dancing to their own personal drummer. The merger of economic game theory with neuroscience promises more precise understanding of those individual differences and how they contribute to the totality of human social interactions. It's understanding those differences, Camerer says, that will make such a break with old schools of economic thought. "A lot of economic theory uses what is called the representative agent model," Camerer told me. In an economy with millions of people, everybody is clearly not going to be completely alike in behavior. Maybe 10 percent will be of some type, 14 percent another type, 6 percent something else. A real mix. "It's often really hard, mathematically, to add all that up," he said. "It's much easier to say that there's one kind of person and there's a million of them. And you can add things up rather easily." So for the sake of computational simplicity, economists would operate as though the world was populated by millions of one generic type of person, using assumptions about how that generic person would behave. "It's not that we don't think people are different—of course they are, but that wasn't the focus of analysis," Camerer said. "It was, well, let's just stick to one type of person. But I think the brain evidence, as well as genetics, is just going to force us to think about individual differences." And in a way, that is a very natural thing for economists to want to do.

The rats that Marian Diamond studied had either an enriched or an impoverished environment. That changed their brain state. If you’re surrounded by a nurturing physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual environment, you’re in one brain state. If you’re surrounded by danger, uncertainty, and hostility, you’re in a quite different brain state. Brain states, along with mental, emotional, and spiritual states, run the gamut. When the brain’s Enlightenment Circuit is turned on, you’re in a happy and positive state. When the Default Mode Network (DMN) of Chapter 2 predominates, you’re in a negative and stressed state. State Progression Cognitive psychologist Michael Hall has been fascinated by human potential for over 40 years. He has studied the most advanced methods, authored more than 30 books on the topic, and mapped the stages by which people change. Unpleasant experiences are what usually motivate us to change. These involve mental, emotional, or spiritual states. Examples of such states are despair, stagnation, anger, or resentment. Hall calls these “unresourceful” states. We can cultivate resourceful states, such as joy, empowerment, mastery, and contentment. To describe the movement of a person from an unresourceful to a resourceful state, Hall uses the term “state progression.” Hall’s “state progression” model has several steps: Identify the unresourceful state. Identify the desired state. Countercondition dysfunctional behavioral patterns that maintain the unresourceful state. Activate change toward the desired state. Experience the target state. Repeat the experience of the desired state. Condition new behaviors that reinforce the desired state. That’s the promise of directing your attention consciously rather than defaulting to the brain’s negativity bias. Attention sustained over time produces state progression and triggers neural plasticity. If you focus on positive beliefs and thoughts repeatedly, bringing your mind and focus back to the good, you then use attention in the service of positive neural plasticity. When we have practiced sufficiently to be able to maintain this focus, we achieve a condition that Hall calls positive state stability. Our minds become stable in that new state. Their default setting is no longer to focus on the negative. The brain’s negativity bias is no longer hijacking our attention and directing it toward the negative things that are happening, either in our own lives or in the world. We have moved through the stages of state progression to positive state stability.

The realization that the brain used so many different kind of chemicals, in addition to classical neurotransmitters, to communicate beween neurons was just the first step in a major conceptual shift in neuroscience. Many of these substances are neuropeptides, and most of those affect mood and behavior. The specificity of their effects resides not in the anatomical connectivity between neurons, but in the distribution of receptors within the brain. Different receptors have very different patterns of distribution, and the distributions differ between species in ways that correlate with differences in behavior. The mere fact of a receptor-peptide mismatch in a particular brain area might have no great importance. It might be that many cells are promiscuous in the receptors that they express: If some receptors see no ligand, the cost to the cells is negligible. Profligate receptor expression might contribute to the evolvability of neural systems, and might be common because organisms with a liberal attitude to receptor expression are those most likely to acquire novels functions. Because extrasynaptic signaling does not require precise point-to-point connectivity, it is intrinsically 'evolvable': a minor mutation in the regulatory region of a peptide receptor gene, by altering the expression pattern, could have functional consequences without any need for anatomical rewiring. That peptide receptors have distinctive patterns of expression, and that peptides produce coherent behavioral effects when given quite crudely into the brain, suggests that volume transmission is used as a signaling mechanism by many different populations of peptidergic neurons. We thus must see neuropeptides as 'hormones of the brain'.

Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it. I am reminded of the comedy in which a seven-time recidivist in an anger-management program extols the virtue of the techniques he’s learned: “They are great and work terrific—as long as you are not really angry.

It is now well established that one can reliably evoke several distinct emotional patterns in all mammals during electrical stimulation of homologous subcortical regions. Typically, animals either like or dislike the stimulation, as can be inferred from such behavioral criteria as conditioned approach and avoidance. If the electrodes are not placed in the right locations, no emotional behaviors are observed. For instance, most of the neocortex is free of such effects. Even though cortical processes such as thoughts and perceptions (i.e., appraisals) can obviously instigate various emotions, to the best of our knowledge, the affective essence of emotionality is subcortically and precognitively organized.

The most primal affective-cognitive interaction in humans, and presumably other animals as well, is encapsulated in the phrases “I want” and “I don’t want.” These assertions are reflected in basic tendencies to approach and avoid various real-life phenomena. However, there are several distinct ways to like and dislike events, and a proper classification scheme will yield a more complex taxonomy of emotions than the simple behavioral dimension of approach and avoidance. For instance, it seems unlikely that the dislike of bitter foods and the dislike of physical pain emerge from one and the same avoidance system. It is equally unlikely that the desire for food and the urge to play emerge from the same brain systems.

Because of the ascending interactions with higher brain areas, there is no emotion without a thought, and many thoughts can evoke emotions. Because of the lower interactions, there is no emotion without a physiological or behavioral consequence, and many of the resulting bodily changes can also regulate the tone of emotional systems in a feedback manner.

Although each instinctual psychobehavioral process requires the concurrent arousal of numerous brain activities (Figure 2.2), our scientific work is greatly simplified by the fact that there are “command processes” at the core of each emotional operating system, as indicated by the ability of localized brain stimulation to activate coherent emotional behavior patterns.9 We can turn on rage, fear, separation distress, and generalized seeking patterns of behavior. Such central coordinating influences can provoke widespread cooperative activities by many brain systems, generating a variety of integrated psychobehavioral and physiological/hormonal response tendencies. These systems can generate internally experienced emotional feelings and promote behavioral flexibility via new learning.

Behaviorism has dealt credibly with the modification and channeling of behavior patterns as a function of learning, but it has not dealt effectively with the nature of the innate sources of behavioral variation that are susceptible to modification via the reinforcement contingencies of the environment. The various cognitive sciences are beginning to address the complexities of the human mind, but until recently they chose to ignore the evolutionary antecedents, such as the neural systems for the passions, upon which our vast cortical potentials are built and to which those potentials may still be subservient.

Despite its claim to a new view among the psychological sciences, affective neuroscience is deeply rooted within physiological psychology, behavioral biology, and the modernized label for all of these disciplines: behavioral neuroscience. The present coverage will rely heavily on data collected by individuals in these fields, but it will put a new twist on the evidence. It reinterprets many of the brain-behavior findings to try to account for the central neuropsychic states of organisms.

We navigate life by making decisions that maximize pleasure and/ or minimize pain.

your thoughts, actions, and behaviors are being recorded somewhere, and every day we have the choice of how we want to program our brains. Functional neuroplasticity is much less common, as it involves the brain’s ability to improve or retain functionality in cases such as when the brain is damaged. This involves more dramatic change of the cortical remapping variety.

THE HIPPOCAMPUS: TRACKING THREATS AND MAKING MEMORIES The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped structure in the center of the limbic system. In my live workshops, the analogy I pick for the hippocampus is that of the military historian. Its most vital job is to compare incoming information with the memory of past threats. If there’s a match, it sounds the alarm by activating the amygdala, which in turn switches on the whole fight-flight-freeze (FFF) system. 3.6. The hippocampus: tracking threats and recording memories. By deciding which signals to pass to the amygdala and which to ignore, the hippocampus regulates our emotions. Some people have an active hippocampus that effectively regulates emotion. Others do not; these unfortunates have a hair-trigger response to their own emotions. They become angry, fearful, or anxious at the slightest stimulus. Their behavior is dictated by their emotions. The hippocampus is also the seat of learning. Novel experiences produce the growth of new synaptic connections in the hippocampus. Go take a class in Mandarin Chinese, learn pickleball, date a new love interest, experiment with recipes from a Hungarian cookbook—your hippocampus will start to grow new connections. But the most essential function of the hippocampus is to catalog the bad stuff of the past, and if anything coming our way in the present resembles that bad stuff, it makes a match and turns on the FFF response.

When we learn about threats as children, and they are accompanied by strong emotions such as fear, they can remain embedded in the neural circuits of the hippocampus for life. Neuroscientists call these “deep emotional learnings.” Like the old posters, they may have no use in the present. They may even be triggering us to react to threats that are entirely imaginary. Yet once learned, and reinforced by conditioned behavior, they are hard to change. Like the dusty posters in the pubs, they may hang around long after they’ve outlived their usefulness. When the hippocampus isn’t sure what to make of a piece of information, it refers it to the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC). That’s the brain’s executive center, the seat of discrimination and knowledge. It takes incoming information from the hippocampus and determines whether the apparent threat is real. For instance, you hear a loud bang and are immediately alarmed. “Gunfire?” wonders the hippocampus. “No,” the PFC tells it. “That was a car backfiring.” The reassured hippocampus then does not pass the alarm to the amygdala. Or perhaps the PFC says, “That group of young men hanging out in the parking lot looks suspicious,” and the hippocampus then signals the amygdala, which puts the body on Code Red. Using that path from the emotional center of the brain to the executive center is crucial to regulating our emotions. Because it involves a feedback loop with information going first to the PFC and then back to the hippocampus from the PFC, it’s called the long path: hippocampus > PFC > hippocampus > amygdala > FFF. The long path is the default for people with effective emotional self-regulation. 3.8. The long path. 3.9. The short path. In people with poor emotional self-regulation, such as patients with PTSD, this circuit is impaired. They startle easily and overreact to innocuous stimuli. The hippocampus cuts out the PFC. Instead of referring incoming threats to the wise discrimination of the primate brain, where the bang can be categorized as “car backfiring,” the hippocampus treats even mild stimuli as though they are life-threatening disasters and activates the amygdala. This short-circuit of the long path creates a short path: hippocampus > amygdala > FFF. The short circuit improves reaction speed, but at the expense of accuracy.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it. A Stanford study of people who experienced “the deep now” found that it changed their behavior.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it. A Stanford study of people who experienced “the deep now” found that it changed their behavior. They “felt they had more time available . . . and were less impatient . . . more willing to volunteer their time to help others . . . preferred experiences over material products . . . and experienced a greater boost in life satisfaction.” A quiet parietal lobe promotes empathy, compassion, relaxation, appreciation, connectedness, and self-esteem.