18. Aggression II

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Stanford University.

Picking up from Monday, OK, so we are now well

into our second topic of the second half,

looking at aggression, competition, cooperation,

empathy, all those guys.

And we've got the drill down by now, starting with behavior

all the way to the right, working our way to the left

all the way back to evolution, genetics, blah, blah.

Where we left off the other day was just

getting into the first box worth of what's

going on in the brain?

What is the neurobiology of what's occurring seconds

before that aggressive act, that compassionate act, all of that?

As we know already, right in the middle of the limbic system,

of course, as we know already, the amygdala

is playing a really central role,

and seeing all the evidence for it--

lesion studies, stimulation studies, the bizarre rarer

realm of humans who have had lesions, or stimulation

there, accidents, or intentional psycho surgical interventions,

beginning to look at the amygdala there,

and the role that it plays.

Now, part of what becomes relevant

there is seeing the kind of information

that the amygdala is getting.

And an important thing to focus on

is something that was mentioned back

in the limbic lecture, the notion we

ended with the other day, the amygdala.

OK, so you look at somebody who has had amygdala damage.

And they tend to not be able to detect fear-evoking faces.

They are overly trustful.

They are underlie skeptical.

They are not taking in the sort of information

we would that leads us to conclude

this is a circumstance that demands arousal,

vigilance, so on.

One of the things that was seen, interesting study