Steven Crane Compiled Section Handouts. Human Behavioral Biology 2012

Hypometabolism (lower basal activity) with frontal cortex, elevated frontal cortex activity in the context of a self-control task. Interpretation: they have to work a lot harder to pull of the same regulation that everybody else does.

How do the amygdala and frontal cortex interact?

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  Bidirectional projections
  
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  You need a frontal cortex on board to get fear extinction
  

What is the lateral hypothalamus all about in the context of aggression?

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  Used to think it was a major aggressive center. Stimulate it and rats attack and kill mice.
  
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  But it's actually just hunger and that's predatory behavior
  

How is empathy mapped out, neuroanatomically?

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  The anterior cingulate activates both when YOU and a LOVED ONE are poked with a pin.
  
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  There's also a lot of hype about mirror neurons in the motor cortex but without much substance behind the theory.
  

How is disgust/moral disgust mapped out neuroanatomically?

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  The insular cortex is active in humans for gustatory AND moral disgust.
  
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  It does this abstraction, this symbolic cognition based on bodily systems.
  

Where else do we see this abstraction/concrete cognitive interface play out?

• Holding warm drinks makes you evaluate people as nicer, "warmer"

• Sitting in a hard chair makes you judge others as meaner, more "hard-assed"

• Primed to think of the country as a person and then read about bacterial invasions and people are less sympathetic towards immigrants.

• Washing your hands after sharing your moral failings makes you less likely to help people.

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  All this showing that evolution is a tinkerer, not an inventor. Duct-taping metaphors onto concrete brain functions.
  

How does the anterior cingulate influence pain/depression?

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  Substance P is the NT involved. Block substance P signaling and you block pain, but it also works as an