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Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.

Robert M. Sapolsky

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Robert M. Sapolsky
Behavior
Especially
Propensities
Brain
Propensity
Comes
Inevitability
Humans
Vulnerability
Genes
Tendencies
Rarely

More quotes by Robert M. Sapolsky

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Genes are important for understanding our behavior. Incredibly important - after all, they code for every protein pertinent to brain function, endocrinology, etc.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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How much you groom somebody else is more important than who grooms you.
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Naturally, things are more complicated - those groovy, pro-social effects of oxytocin apply to how we interact with in-group members.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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We're getting along so well I trust you so much for this one second that I'm going to let you yank on me.
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Oxytocin is lauded for how it promotes warmth, generosity, social bonding, cooperation, trust, and compassion.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who can do the most acts of random kindness.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Perhaps most excitingly, we are uncovering the brain basis of our behaviors - normal, abnormal and in-between. We are mapping a neurobiology of what makes us us.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The frontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until age 25, which is wild!
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Importantly, rather than promoting aggression, testosterone promotes whatever is needed to maintain status when challenged.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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What happened during the minutes before? That's the realm of sensory stimuli of the nervous system.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The frontal cortex is an incredibly interesting part of the brain - ours is proportionately bigger and/or more complex than in any other species.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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But often, it's easier to resist temptation with distraction, or to be so inculcated in doing the right thing that it's automatic, outside the frontal cortex's portfolio - Then it isn't the harder thing, it's the only thing you can do.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The less it is possible that something can be, the more it must be.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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We’ve evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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What happened in the milliseconds before a behavior to cause it? That's in the neurobiological realm.
Robert M. Sapolsky