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evolution

New book suggest ways to understand behavior and boost happiness in light of human evolution

March 15, 2019 by Greater Good Science Center

We humans evolved to be social crea­tures. By gain­ing the skills to coop­er­ate with oth­ers, we were able to stave off preda­tors, eat more con­sis­tent­ly, and care for each other’s young, allow­ing our genes to car­ry forward.

So, why do we still strug­gle at times to get along—even to the extent that we war on one anoth­er? And how can under­stand­ing our evo­lu­tion­ary her­itage help us have bet­ter rela­tion­ships and more hap­pi­ness today? [Read more…] about New book sug­gest ways to under­stand behav­ior and boost hap­pi­ness in light of human evolution

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: development, evolution, happiness, neurological, prosocial, social leap, well-being

Transcript: David DiSalvo on How Cultural Evolution Outpaces Natural Evolution and Old Brain Metaphors

December 9, 2011 by SharpBrains

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today with David DiS­al­vo, author of What makes your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site, mod­er­at­ed by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. You vis­it pre­vi­ous Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Full Tran­script (Light­ly edit­ed) of Live Q&A held on Decem­ber 9th, 2–3pm ET

[Read more…] about Tran­script: David DiS­al­vo on How Cul­tur­al Evo­lu­tion Out­paces Nat­ur­al Evo­lu­tion and Old Brain Metaphors

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: adaptation, Advanced-Brain-Technologies, Baumeister, behavior, book, brain, conscious, default mode, evolution, improvement, information, Internet, Kahneman, metaphor, multi-task, multitasking, neural network, neuroplasticity, Peter Singer, Posit-Science, psychosocial, Ray Kurzweil, subconscious, Tierney, wedge, Willpower, Working-memory

The Evolution of Empathy

February 2, 2010 by Greater Good Science Center

(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine).

The Evo­lu­tion of Empathy

Empa­thy’s not a unique­ly human trait, explains pri­ma­tol­o­gist Frans de Waal. Apes and oth­er ani­mals feel it as well, sug­gest­ing that empa­thy is tru­ly an essen­tial part of who we are.

Once upon a time, the Unit­ed States had a pres­i­dent known for a pecu­liar facial dis­play. In an act of con­trolled emo­tion, he would bite his low­er lip and tell his audi­ence, “I feel your pain.” Whether the dis­play was sin­cere is not the issue here; how we are affect­ed by anoth­er’s predica­ment is. Empa­thy is sec­ond nature to us, so much so that any­one devoid of it strikes us as dan­ger­ous or men­tal­ly ill.

At the movies, we can’t help but get inside the skin of the char­ac­ters on the screen. We despair when their gigan­tic ship sinks; we exult when they final­ly stare into the eyes of a long-lost lover.

We are so used to empa­thy that we take it for grant­ed, yet it is essen­tial to human soci­ety as we know it. Our moral­i­ty depends on it: How could any­one be expect­ed to fol­low the gold­en rule with­out the capac­i­ty to men­tal­ly trade places with a fel­low human being? It is log­i­cal to assume that this capac­i­ty came first, giv­ing rise to the gold­en rule itself. The act of per­spec­tive-tak­ing is summed up by one of the most endur­ing def­i­n­i­tions of empa­thy that we have, for­mu­lat­ed by Adam Smith as “chang­ing places in fan­cy with the sufferer.”

Even Smith, the father of eco­nom­ics, best known for empha­siz­ing self-inter­est as the lifeblood of human econ­o­my, under­stood that the con­cepts of self-inter­est and empa­thy don’t con­flict. Empa­thy makes us reach out to oth­ers, first just emo­tion­al­ly, but lat­er in life also by under­stand­ing their situation.

This capac­i­ty like­ly evolved because it served our ances­tors’ sur­vival in two ways. First, like every mam­mal, we need to be sen­si­tive to the needs of our off­spring. Sec­ond, our species depends on coop­er­a­tion, which means that we do bet­ter if we are sur­round­ed by healthy, capa­ble group mates. Tak­ing care of them is just a mat­ter of enlight­ened self-interest.

Ani­mal empathy

It is hard to imag­ine that empathy—a char­ac­ter­is­tic so basic to the human species that it emerges ear­ly in life, and is accom­pa­nied by strong phys­i­o­log­i­cal reactions—came into exis­tence only when our lin­eage split off from that of the apes. It must be far old­er than that. Exam­ples of empa­thy in oth­er ani­mals would sug­gest a long evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry to this capac­i­ty in humans.

Evo­lu­tion rarely throws any­thing out. Instead, [Read more…] about The Evo­lu­tion of Empathy

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: empathy, evolution

Training Attention and Emotional Self-Regulation — Interview with Michael Posner

October 18, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

(Edi­tor’s Note: this is one of the 20 inter­views includ­ed in the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age)

Michael I. Pos­ner is a promi­nent sci­en­tist in the field of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science. He is cur­rent­ly an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon (Depart­mentMichael Posner of Psy­chol­o­gy, Insti­tute of Cog­ni­tive and Deci­sion Sci­ences). In August 2008, the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence made him the first recip­i­ent of the Dogan Prize “in recog­ni­tion of a con­tri­bu­tion that rep­re­sents a major advance in psy­chol­o­gy by a schol­ar or team of schol­ars of high inter­na­tion­al reputation.”

Dr. Pos­ner, many thanks for your time today. I real­ly enjoyed the James Arthur Lec­ture mono­graph on Evo­lu­tion and Devel­op­ment of Self-Reg­u­la­tion that you deliv­ered last year. Could you pro­vide a sum­ma­ry of the research you presented?

I would empha­size that we human beings can reg­u­late our thoughts, emo­tions, and actions to a greater degree than oth­er pri­mates. For exam­ple, we can choose to pass up an imme­di­ate reward for a larg­er, delayed reward.

We can plan ahead, resist dis­trac­tions, be goal-ori­ent­ed. These human char­ac­ter­is­tics appear to depend upon what we often call “self-reg­u­la­tion.” What is excit­ing these days is that progress in neu­roimag­ing and in genet­ics make it pos­si­ble to think about self-reg­u­la­tion in terms of spe­cif­ic brain-based networks.

Can you explain what self-reg­u­la­tion is?

All par­ents have seen this in their kids. Par­ents can see the remark­able trans­for­ma­tion as their chil­dren devel­op the abil­i­ty to reg­u­late emo­tions and to per­sist with goals in the face of dis­trac­tions. That abil­i­ty is usu­al­ly labeled ‚ self-regulation.

The oth­er main area of your research is atten­tion. Can you explain the brain-basis for what we usu­al­ly call “atten­tion”?

I have been inter­est­ed in how the atten­tion sys­tem devel­ops in infan­cy and ear­ly childhood.

One of our major find­ings, thanks to neu­roimag­ing, is that there is not one sin­gle “atten­tion”, but three sep­a­rate func­tions of atten­tion with three sep­a­rate under­ly­ing brain net­works: alert­ing, ori­ent­ing, and exec­u­tive atten­tion. [Read more…] about Train­ing Atten­tion and Emo­tion­al Self-Reg­u­la­tion — Inter­view with Michael Posner

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: attention, attention-training, cingulate-gyrus, cognitive-science, Cognitive-Training, development, diffusion-tensor, Dogan-Prize, effortful-control, emotional-self-regulation, Emotions, epigenetics, evolution, executive-attention, Executive-Functions, fMRI, Genetics, grey-matter, James-Arthur-Lecture, meditation, Michael-Posner, mindfulness, networks, neuroimaging, neuron, Parenting, Psychology, self-regulation, Stroop-Test, thoughts, University-of-Oregon, white-matter, Working-memory, working-memory-training

Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together

November 25, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Every­one has heard of “Use It or Lose It.” Now…what is “It”?

Last week I gave a talk at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cis­co, and one of the areas atten­dees seemed to enjoy the most was learn­ing about what our brains are and how they work, peak­ing into the “black box” of our minds. With­out under­stand­ing a few basics, how can we make good deci­sions about brain health?

At a quick glance:, the brain is com­posed of 3 “brains” or main sub-sys­tems, each named after the evo­lu­tion­ary moment in which the sub-sys­tem is believed to have appeared. [Read more…] about Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire togeth­er Wire together

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: brain, brain-exercise, Brain-Fitness, Brain-health, cells-that-fire-together-wire-together, cognitive-interventions, Emotions, evolution, frontal-lobes, Limbic-System, Mammalian-Brain, memory, mental-stimulation, mind, neocortex, neuroimaging, Neurons, planning, synapses, Use-It-or-Lose-It

Darwin’s adult neuroplasticity

October 24, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

Charles Darwin 1880Charles Dar­win (1809–1882)‘s auto­bi­og­ra­phy (full text free online) includes some very insight­ful refec­tions on the evo­lu­tion of his own mind dur­ing his mid­dle-age, show­cas­ing the pow­er of the brain to rewire itself through expe­ri­ence (neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty) dur­ing our whole life­times-not just when we are youngest.

He wrote these paragraphs at the age of 72 (I have bold­ed some key sen­tences for empha­sis, the whole text makes great reading):

“I have said that in one respect my mind has changed dur­ing the last twen­ty or thir­ty years. Up to the age of thir­ty, or beyond it, poet­ry of many kinds, such as the works of Mil­ton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shel­ley, gave me great plea­sure, and even as a school­boy I took intense delight in Shake­speare, espe­cial­ly in the his­tor­i­cal plays. I have also said that for­mer­ly pic­tures gave me con­sid­er­able, and music very great delight. But now for many years I can­not endure to read a line of poet­ry: I have tried late­ly to read Shake­speare, and found it so intol­er­a­bly dull that it nau­se­at­ed me. I have also almost lost my taste for pic­tures or music. Music gen­er­al­ly sets me think­ing too ener­get­i­cal­ly on what I have been at work on, instead of giv­ing me plea­sure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquis­ite delight which it for­mer­ly did. On the oth­er hand, nov­els which are works of the imag­i­na­tion, though not of a very high order, have been for years a won­der­ful relief and plea­sure to me, and I often bless all nov­el­ists. A sur­pris­ing num­ber have been read aloud to me, and I like all if mod­er­ate­ly good, and if they do not end unhap­pi­ly– against which a law ought to be passed. A nov­el, accord­ing to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it con­tains some per­son whom one can thor­ough­ly love, and if a pret­ty woman all the better.

This curi­ous and lam­en­ta­ble loss of the high­er aes­thet­ic tastes is all the odd­er, as books on his­to­ry, biogra­phies, and trav­els (inde­pen­dent­ly of any sci­en­tif­ic facts which they may con­tain), and essays on all sorts of sub­jects inter­est me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grind­ing gen­er­al laws out of large col­lec­tions of facts, but why this should have caused the atro­phy of that part of the brain alone, on which the high­er tastes depend, I can­not con­ceive. A man with [Read more…] about Darwin’s adult neuroplasticity

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: adult-learning, analytical, brain, cells-that-fire-together-wire-together, Darwin, evolution, Learning, mental, mental-exercise, mind, mindset, Neurons, neuroplasticity, scientist, synapses

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