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Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky, 2017

The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do?

#books
#nonfiction
#anthropology
#neurobiology
#behaviour

Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture?

This week's #NewBooks at the library: I bought several second copies of
- How the Mind Changed: A Human History of our Evolving Brain
- Kate Raworth's Doughnut #Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. We had hoped to get this signed when she recently spoke in London, but, alas, failed.
- An ex-library copy of an older classic on #Buffon: From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, of which I made a note after reviewing Every Living Thing some time back.

#Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon #Neurobiology #Degrowth #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books.

On the left, standing up, How the Mind Changed, showing two pictures of a human brain on a black background. At the top, part of a connectome picture, showing a high-resolution brain scan of neuronal connections in green, red, and purple; at the bottom, part of the surface of the brain, using the same green, red, and purple colour scheme

In the middle, Doughtnut Economics, showing a close-up picture of a blackboard with a drawing in white chalk of two concentric circles, one inside the other. Two pieces of white chalk lie next to the outer circle.

On the right, From Natural History to the History of Nature, showing a plain hardcover book bound in navy blue cloth with gold lettering. This is an ex-library copy bound in transparent protective foil that gives it a slightly shiny look.

Long-Term Keto Diet May Damage Your Body

Summary: A new study reveals that while the ketogenic diet can prevent weight gain, it may cause severe long-term metabolic problems. Researchers found that mice on a long-term keto diet …
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Nutrition #brainresearch #health #KetoDiet #KetogenicDiet #Medicine #metabolism #neurobiology #Neurology #neuroscience #nutrition #science #UniversityofUtah
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2344075/long-term-keto-diet-may-damage-your-body/

Day 15: The amount of sleep you need is influenced by your genes. For the majority of the population, sleep length is highly polygenic, meaning that a lot of genes each contribute a little bit to determine how much one individual needs.

And then there’s the really lucky ones. If you ever met someone who’s fully functional after only 5 hours of sleep and thought “man, they must’ve won the genetic lottery”, you were right. This extreme trait is determined by a handful of genes and is known as “familial natural short sleep”. And as if that weren’t luck enough, it seems that people with this trait might also be protected against neurodegenerative disorders, such as dementia.

#sleep #genetics #neuroscience #neurobiology #ShyButSharing365

C’è un tipo di silenzio che non nasce dal dolore, ma dalla chimica.
Non è calma, è assenza.
Non è pace, è sospensione.
Quando la dopamina si spegne, la vita resta accesa ma non risponde più.
Ho scritto di cosa succede davvero con gli antipsicotici di prima generazione, e di quanto sia sottile il confine tra cura e cancellazione.

È online su MichiyoSpace🦔
Link nei commenti.

#antipsicotici #dopamina #psichiatria #neuroscienze #farmaci #michiyospace #gliannidelbuio #mentalhealth #neurobiology #dopamine #psychiatry #humanrights

C’è un tipo di silenzio che non nasce dal dolore, ma dalla chimica.
Non è calma, è assenza.
Non è pace, è sospensione.
Quando la dopamina si spegne, la vita resta accesa ma non risponde più.
Ho scritto di cosa succede davvero con gli antipsicotici di prima generazione, e di quanto sia sottile il confine tra cura e cancellazione.

È online su MichiyoSpace🦔
Link nei commenti

***

There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t come from pain, but from chemistry.
It’s not calm, it’s absence.
It’s not peace, it’s suspension.
When dopamine shuts down, life stays on—but stops answering.
I wrote about what really happens with first-generation antipsychotics, and how thin the line is between care and erasure.

Now online on MichiyoSpace 🦔
Link in comments.

#antipsicotici #dopamina #psichiatria #neuroscienze #farmaci #michiyospace #gliannidelbuio #mentalhealth #neurobiology #dopamine #psychiatry #humanrights

This week's #NewBooks at the library: @princetonupress has a 70% off sale at the moment! I bagged myself four fascinating books:
- The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences
- The Network of Life: A New View of #Evolution
- Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain Is Built
- Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time

#Psychology #Neuroscience #Neurobiology #Embryology #DevelopmentalBiology #ClimateChange #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of four books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books, part of the beech-coloured laminate floor, and a red curtain covering the door.

From left to right, we have:
- The Mirror and the Mind, which divides its cover into a white and silver-coloured half and plays tricks by mirroring the title and author name;
- The Network of Life, showing a close-up of a leaf's vein pattern, the colours grading from yellow through green to blue;
- Zero to Birth, which shows a diagram of a human embryo inside the capital B of Birth, and the outline of a human brain in coloured dots that are connected by many lines;
- and Long Problems, which shows a dark blue background with the title in bold white letters, printed at a ninety-degree angle and narrowing towards the top, imitating the Star Wars title crawl.

Discussing the #neurobiology of #schizophrenia, highlighting the role of genetics and complex neurotransmitter dysfunction, particularly involving dopamine and glutamate, and concludes by outlining the integrated treatment approach of antipsychotic medications and psychosocial therapies.
#WhatIs #sflorg #Neuroscience
https://www.sflorg.com/2025/09/wi09272501.html

🚨 New hypothesis: a unifying mechanism for #Schizophrenia #Depression & #PTSD and other diseases - a dangerously narrowed excitability margin in hippocampal CA1.
🎥 Video explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWbEN-F5MLY

📄 Preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/e4cwb_v3

#Neuroscience #Psychiatry #MentalHealth #OpenScience #Brain #Research #Neurobiology #FediSci #autism #alzheimer #bipolar #health

Graphical abstract of a unifying hypothesis: narrowing of the ventral CA1 excitability buffer (ΔVmargin) integrates stress, genes, environment, and network oscillations. Below ~5 mV, oscillations involuntarily activate fear/sadness/trauma engrams → schizophrenia, depression, or PTSD.

All these studies are over 4 years old, and one is just an X link to some MAGAtwat. 5 years in #neurobiology time is a few seconds. It has taken 20 years alone to develop MRI technology with contrast to see what the brain is actually doing without putting you into Immediate renal failure. These things take DECADES to research. And none of the #trump cronies are smart enough. I know some brilliant neuropsychs who say "your guess is as good as mine" when talking #autism https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/fact-evidence-suggests-link-between-acetaminophen-autism/

#Neurobiology #Neurobiologie #knowledge #wissen #wissenschaft #science
Ursache optischer Täuschung aufgedeckt
Wie spezielle Hirnzellen und eine Rückkopplung optische Illusionen erzeugen 🤓
https://www.scinexx.de/news/psychologie/ursache-optischer-taeuschungen-aufgedeckt/

“What is its purpose?” Hoicka asked, of humor in kids. She pointed to research she’d conducted with another psychologist, Burcu Soy Telli, which showed that “humor development predicted socio-cognitive development six months later, but not the other way around.” Joking around, in other words, helps kids learn to think about what other people are thinking.
#culture #neurobiology #psychology #science #humor #development #behavior
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/why-are-kids-so-funny

Green Mediterranean Diet Slows Brain Aging

Summary: A large-scale dietary trial has shown that a green-Mediterranean diet can slow brain aging by altering key blood proteins linked to n…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #mediterranean #MediterraneanDiet #MediterraneanFood #Ben-GurionUniversityoftheNegev #brainaging #brainresearch #greenMediterraneandiet #Mediterranean #neurobiology #Neurology #neuroscience #science
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2286544/green-mediterranean-diet-slows-brain-aging/

🚨 Cancer cells hijack neural networks: Researchers uncover new dimension of cancer biology 🧠

An international research team lead by Dr Filippo Beleggia has discovered that small-cell lung cancer cells form functional synapses with neurons to grow faster.💡

💊The study titled “Functional synapses between neurons and small-cell lung cancer” was published in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09434-9

Lear more ▶️ https://uni.koeln/FBDZ5

#uniköln #unicologne #Neurobiology #CancerResearch #sclc #lungcancer