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Robert-Sapolsky

Peace Among Primates (Part 3)

April 20, 2008 by Greater Good Science Center

A few days ago we pub­lished the first and sec­ond install­ments of this Peace Among Pri­mates series, by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Robert Sapol­sky. Today we pub­lish the third and final one.

Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 3)

Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing ourselves.

–By Robert M. Sapolsky

Nat­ur­al born killers?

[Read more…] about Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 3)

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: aggression, baboons, behavior, culture, Forest-Troop, Genetics, Greater-Good, hierarchy, Kenya, Learning, neuroscientist, peace, primates, Robert-Sapolsky

Peace Among Primates (Part 2)

April 12, 2008 by Greater Good Science Center

(Edi­tor’s Note: A few days ago we pub­lished the first install­ment of this Peace Among Pri­mates series, by neu­ro­sci­en­tist Robert Sapol­sky. Today we pub­lish the sec­ond install­ment. Next Sat­ur­day, April 19th, you can come back and read the third and final part in the series.)

Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 2)

Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing ourselves.

–By Robert M. Sapolsky

Left behind

In the ear­ly 1980s, “For­est Troop,” a group of savan­na baboons I had been studying—virtually liv­ing with—for years, was going about its busi­ness in a nation­al park in Kenya when a neigh­bor­ing baboon group had a stroke of luck: [Read more…] about Peace Among Pri­mates (Part 2)

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: baboons, behavior, culture, Forest-Troop, Genetics, Greater-Good, hierarchy, Kenya, Learning, neuroscientist, peace, primates, Robert-Sapolsky

Peace Among Primates- by Robert Sapolsky

April 5, 2008 by Greater Good Science Center

(Edi­tor’s Note: One of the most orig­i­nal minds we have ever encoun­tered is that of Robert Sapol­sky, the Stan­ford-based neu­ro­sci­en­tist, pri­ma­tol­o­gist, author of A Pri­mate’s Mem­oir, and more. We high­ly rec­om­mend most of his books. Above all, for any­one inter­est­ed in brain health, this is a must read and very fun: Why Zebras Don't Have Ulcers- Robert SapolskyWhy Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updat­ed Guide To Stress, Stress Relat­ed Dis­eases, and Cop­ing. We are hon­ored to bring you a guest arti­cle series by Robert Sapol­sky, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

—————–

Peace Among Primates

Any­one who says peace is not part of human nature knows too lit­tle about pri­mates, includ­ing ourselves.

–By Robert M. Sapolsky

It used to be thought that humans were the only sav­age­ly vio­lent pri­mate.  “We are the only species that kills its own, nar­ra­tors intoned por­ten­tous­ly in nature films sev­er­al decades ago. That view fell by the way­side in the 1960s as it became clear that some oth­er pri­mates kill their fel­lows aplen­ty. Males kill; females kill. Some use their tool­mak­ing skills to fash­ion big­ger and bet­ter cud­gels. Oth­er pri­mates even engage in what can only be called war­fare, orga­nized, proac­tive group vio­lence direct­ed at oth­er populations.

Yet as field stud­ies of pri­mates expand­ed, what became most strik­ing was the vari­a­tion in social prac­tices across species. Yes, some pri­mate species have lives filled with vio­lence, fre­quent and var­ied. But life among oth­ers is filled with com­mu­ni­tar­i­an­ism, egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, and coop­er­a­tive child rear­ing. [Read more…] about Peace Among Pri­mates- by Robert Sapolsky

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: behavior, Brain-health, coping-with-stress, environment, Foreign-Affairs, genes, Greater-Good-Magazine, neuroscience, neuroscientist, primates, Robert-Sapolsky, Stanford, Stress, violence, war-on-terror, Why-Zebras-dont-have-Ulcers

Stress and Neural Wreckage: Part of the Brain Plasticity Puzzle

February 5, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Victoria Crater MarsEdi­tor’s Note: Below you have a very insight­ful arti­cle on stress by Gre­go­ry Kel­let, a researcher at UCSF. Enjoy!

———————————————-

“My brain is fried, toast, fraz­zled, burnt out. How many times have you said or heard one ver­sion or anoth­er of these state­ments. Most of us think we are being fig­u­ra­tive when we utter such phras­es, but research shows that the bio­log­i­cal con­se­quences of sus­tained high lev­els of stress may have us being more accu­rate than we would like to think.

Crash Course on Stress 

Our bod­ies are a com­plex bal­anc­ing act between sys­tems work­ing full time to keep us alive and well. This bal­anc­ing act is con­stant­ly adapt­ing to the myr­i­ad of changes occur­ring every sec­ond with­in our­selves and our envi­ron­ments. When it gets dark our pupils dilate, when we get hot we sweat, when we smell food we sali­vate, and so forth. This con­stant bal­anc­ing act main­tains a range of sta­bil­i­ty in the body via change; and is often referred to as allosta­sis. Any change which threat­ens this bal­ance can be referred to as allo­sta­t­ic load or stress.

Allo­sta­t­ic load/stress is part of being alive. For exam­ple just by get­ting up in the morn­ing, we all expe­ri­ence a very impor­tant need to increase our heart rate and blood pres­sure in order to feed our new­ly ele­vat­ed brain. Although usu­al­ly man­age­able, this is a change which the body needs to adapt to and, by our def­i­n­i­tion, a stressor.

Stress is only a prob­lem when this allo­sta­t­ic load becomes over­load. When change is exces­sive or [Read more…] about Stress and Neur­al Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Puzzle

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: adrenaline, blood-pressure, brain, brain-damage, Brain-Plasticity, burnout, Cortisol, crash-course, Emotions, epinephrine, excessive-stress, heart-rate, hippocampus, memories, Neural-Wreckage, Neurogenesis, Neurons, Robert-Sapolsky, SFSU, Stress, stressor, synapses, UCSF

Brain Plasticity, Health and Fitness Books

January 17, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

As you may have noticed, we just changed a few things in our site, includ­ing prepar­ing a more sol­id Resources sec­tion. Please take a look at the nav­i­ga­tion bar at the top.

One of the new pages, that we will update often, is an expand­ed Books page. Here are the books that we are rec­om­mend­ing now.

Fas­ci­nat­ing books on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty (the abil­i­ty of the brain to rewire itself through experience):

Sharon Begley: Train Your Mind, Change Your BrainTrain Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Sci­ence Reveals Our Extra­or­di­nary Poten­tial to Trans­form Our­selves — by Sharon Begley.

 

The Brain That Changes Itself - Norman DoidgeThe Brain That Changes Itself: Sto­ries of Per­son­al Tri­umph from the Fron­tiers of Brain Sci­ence — by Nor­man Doidge.

 

Great pop­u­lar sci­ence books by [Read more…] about Brain Plas­tic­i­ty, Health and Fit­ness Books

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Allen-D.-Bragdon, brain-fitness-books, brain-health-books, Brain-Plasticity, brett-steenbarger, cognitive-health-books, David-Gamon, Dharma-Singh-Khalsa, Elkhonon-Goldberg, Eric-Kandel, Floyd-Bloom, Gary-Small, James-Zull, Janet-Hopson, John-Ratey, Judith-Beck, Larry-McCleary, Marian-Diamond, Norman-Doidge, Rita-Carter, Robert-Emmons, Robert-Sapolsky, Sharon-Begley, V.-S.-Ramachandran

Cognitive Development and Brain Research: Articles, Books, Papers (ASA)

October 28, 2007 by Alvaro Fernandez

brain fitness eventWe had a very fun ses­sion titled Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health pro­fes­sion­als a cou­ple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 atten­dants and very good par­tic­i­pa­tion, show­ing great inter­est in the top­ic. I can’t wait to see the evaluations.

These are some of the resources I promised as a fol­low-up, which can be use­ful to every­one inter­est­ed in our field:

Good gen­er­al arti­cles in the busi­ness and gen­er­al media:

Change or Die

Want a sharp mind for your gold­en years? Start now

You’re Wis­er Now

On how new neu­rons are born and grow in the adult brain:

Salk Sci­en­tists Demon­strate For The First Time That New­ly Born Brain Cells Are Func­tion­al In The Adult Brain 

Old Brains, New Tricks

On the sur­pris­ing plas­tic­i­ty and devel­op­ment poten­tial through­out life:

Brain Plas­tic­i­ty, Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing and Reading

Jug­gling Jug­gles the Brain

Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain

Oth­er impor­tant aspects:

Stress and the Brain

Exer­cise and the Brain

Humor, Laugh­ter and The Brain

On the impor­tance and impact of men­tal stim­u­la­tion and train­ing: [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment and Brain Research: Arti­cles, Books, Papers (ASA)

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: add/-adhd, aging, American-Society-Aging, articles, Books, brain-exercise, brain-fitness-resources, brain-health-resources, brain-improvement, brain-research, brain-reserve, Brain-Training, brain-workouts, cognitive-development, cognitive-fitness, development, Elkhonon-Goldberg, Eric-Kandel, health, health-professionals, healthy-aging, John-Ratey, Marian-Diamond, mental-stimulation, Neurons, older-adults, Prevent-Alzheimers, Ramachandran, Robert-Sapolsky, scientific-american, Sharon-Begley, wellness

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