Sublime

Gray’s data showed that the sensitivity of the amygdala depended, at least in part, on the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin in that part of the brain. Animals with low serotonin levels were hyperreactive to stressful stimuli (like loud sounds), while higher levels of serotonin dampened their fear system, making them less likely to become

The science of complex systems is the study of how local interactions can lead to global consequences.

proposed that monkeys and apes had larger brains than other mammals because they lived in socially much more complex groups, a suggestion they termed the ‘Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis’

It doesn’t seem particularly compelling. One source of evidence is work by Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist who has dissolved the brains of many creatures to determine how many neurons are present. She’s found a lot of interesting scaling laws. She has a paper discussing the human brain as a scaled-up primate brain.60 Across a wide variety

This book is about the social body in which we are the unwitting cells. It is about the hidden ways in which that social group manipulates our psychology, and even our biology. It is about how a social organism scrambles for survival and works for mastery over other organisms of its kind. It is about how we, without the slightest sense of what the