Quería probar si existen ciertas ventanas temporales de maduración netamente definidas durante las cuales formamos nuestros gustos culturales (...) en concreto, si existe una edad determinada a la que...
Pretty straightforwardly, the more categories of adversities a child suffers, the dimmer his or her chances of a happy, functional adulthood.45
Oxytocin and vasopressin facilitate mother-infant bond formation and monogamous pair-bonding, decrease anxiety and stress, enhance trust and social affiliation, and make people more cooperative and ge...
Now consider a genome consisting of genes A and B, meaning three different transcription profiles—A is transcribed, B is transcribed, A and B are transcribed—requiring three different TFs (assuming yo...
Norenzayan distinguishes between private and communal religiosity in surveying support for suicide bombers among Palestinians.17 In a refutation of Islam = terrorism idiocy, people’s personal religios...
Most child behavioral development research is implicitly stage oriented, concerning: (a) the sequence with which stages emerge; (b) how experience influences the speed and surety with which that seque...
Moreover, when people are hungry, they become less charitable and more aggressive (e.g., choosing more severe punishment for an opponent in a game).fn7 There’s
Memory can be dramatically disrupted if you force something that’s implicit into explicit channels. Here’s an example that will finally make reading this book worth your while—how to make neurobiology...
MAO-A variants show other important gene/environment interactions. For example, in one study the low-activity MAO-A variant predicts criminality, but only if coupled with high testosterone levels
Los humanos suelen sobrevalorar cualquier grupo del que formen parte y demonizar al grupo de fuera. Los grupos excluyentes suelen estar definidos por la edad, así que cuando tienes 15 años un deseo cl...
Logically, when the amygdala wants to mobilize a behavior—say, fleeing—it talks to the frontal cortex, seeking its executive approval. But if sufficiently aroused, the amygdala talks directly to subco...
Let’s see what multifactorial means in a practical sense. Consider someone with frequent depression who is visiting a friend today, pouring her heart out about her problems. How much could you have pr...
LeDoux and others have shown how auditory information about the tone stimulates BLA neurons. At first, activation of those neurons is irrelevant to the central amygdala (whose neurons are destined to...
Knutson’s group shows that the greater the probability of reward, the more activation in the medial PFC.96 But switches from 50 to 25 percent and from 50 to 75 percent both reduce the magnitude of unc...
Kids learn dichotomies in the absence of any ill intent. When a kindergarten teacher says, Good morning, boys and girls, the kids are being taught that dividing the world that way is more meaningful t...
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 shock. When this unconditioned stimulus occurs, the central amygdala activate...
It is the punisher’s mind-set where everything must be changed. The difficulty of this is explored in the superb book The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (2014) by Morris Hoffman, a...
It is far from guaranteed that an empathic state leads to a compassionate act. One reason for this is captured superbly by the essayist Leslie Jamison: [Empathy] can also offer a dangerous sense of co...
Irrational optimism can be great; it’s why only about 15 percent instead of 99 percent of humans get clinically depressed.
Infuse oxytocin into the brain of a virgin rat, and she’ll act maternally—retrieving, grooming, and licking pups. Block the actions of oxytocin in a rodent mother,fn6,23 and she’ll stop maternal behav...