(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 the rest of this entry »

(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 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.)

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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 the rest of this entry »

We human beings are social ani­mals. It seems intu­itive (even for intro­verts!) that social con­tact has ben­e­fits. Obvi­ously we need other peo­ple to ful­fill basic needs such mak­ing sure that our genes out­live. Maybe less obvi­ously we seem to need other peo­ple to main­tain ade­quate lev­els of men­tal well being and motivation.

Even less obvi­ously, social con­tact may help us improve our brain functions…

Men­tal fit­ness seems to depend on a large part on being con­nected with other peo­ple. For instance peo­ple with low social sup­port seem to be more prone to men­tal ill­ness (McGuire & Raleigh, 1986). In 2007, Glad­stone and col­leagues stud­ied 218 patients with major depres­sion and found out that low social sup­port, espe­cially com­ing from the fam­ily, was asso­ci­ated with chronic depression.

Merely imag­in­ing lone­li­ness can neg­a­tively affect our behavior…

Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­ested a good, non-technical, sum­mary of the impli­ca­tions of recent brain sci­ence in our daily lives? Biol­o­gist John Med­ina offers that in his arti­cle below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School. Enjoy!

(Note: John will be in the Bay Area on April 8 and 9th, speak­ing at Google and San Jose Rotary).

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Brain Rules

– By John Medina

Go ahead and mul­ti­ply the num­ber 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few sec­onds? There is a young man who can dou­ble that num­ber 24 times in the space of a few sec­onds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the exact time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can cor­rectly deter­mine the exact dimen­sions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such life­like and pow­er­ful pic­tures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madi­son Avenue. Yet none of these chil­dren could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amaz­ing thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

We often hear (gladly!) how teach­ers use our blog arti­cles and brain teasers in their classes. We also hear how many psy­chol­ogy and biol­ogy teach­ers are get­ting their stu­dents excited about brain research, and, to con­tribute to their efforts, we like to rec­og­nize some great initiatives.

Last year, Jef­frey Gonce, a Psy­chol­ogy teacher at Red Land High School (West Shore School Dis­trict, PA) asked his stu­dents to “com­plete a project describ­ing a recent brain (or genetic) study that affects behav­ior.” The stu­dents could opt to post their arti­cles online, and Jef­frey was kind enough to send us a link to read the results. We enjoyed read­ing them all, and pub­lished in our blog this beau­ti­ful essay, titled “Tis bet­ter to give than receive”, writ­ten by Alexan­dra, which was sub­se­quently included in a num­ber of neu­ro­science an psy­chol­ogy blogs.

This year, Jef­frey also sent us his stu­dents’ essays, and we are going to rec­og­nize and pub­lish this great essay by high school stu­dent Megan. Enjoy!
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It has long been the source of sci­en­tific debate as to whether music can improve the cog­ni­tive processes in chil­dren. Referred to by some as “The Mozart Effect,” a strong Read the rest of this entry »

TED Con­fer­ence, a great annual con­fer­ence on any­thing and every­thing new and mean­ing­ful, announces the pub­lic launch of their revamped web­site with great con­tent and social net­work­ing tools, all under the ban­ner “Ideas worth spreading”.

You can exer­cise your mind by learn­ing about most sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy sub­jects through won­der­ful TEDTalks video clips. Some examples:

• a few pre­sen­ta­tions on the theme How the Mind Works
• Bill Clin­ton
• E.O. Wil­son
• Barry Schwartz on the para­dox of choice

and many many more.