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Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez.

Robert M. Sapolsky

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Robert M. Sapolsky
According
Sing
Baez
Talking
Meme
Feelings
Oxytocin
Give
Memes
Better
Joan
Giving
Labs
Like
Rats

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Most people who do a lot of exercise, particularly in the form of competitive athletics, have unneurotic, extraverted, optimistic personalities to begin with. (Marathon runners are exceptions to this.)
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Importantly, rather than promoting aggression, testosterone promotes whatever is needed to maintain status when challenged.
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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.
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What happened during the minutes before? That's the realm of sensory stimuli of the nervous system.
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Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.
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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.
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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.
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We’ve evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.
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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.
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We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.
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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.
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Oxytocin is lauded for how it promotes warmth, generosity, social bonding, cooperation, trust, and compassion.
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As long as experiencing your optimal level of good stress doesn't damage others, it's hard to objectively define where normal enjoyment of stimulation becomes adrenaline junkiehood.
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Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.
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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.
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...I might continue to believe that there is no god even if it were proved that there is. A religious friend of mine once remarked that the concept of god is useful, because you can berate god during the bad times. But it is clear to me that I don't need to believe there is a god in order to berate him.
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Only humans invent moralizing gods who monitor our behavior.
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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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Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads.
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The regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.
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