Class 1_ Evolution of the Social Brain.pptx

Introductory Sociology Lecture 1 Tim MacNeill https://www.timmacneill.com/ Introduction: The Social Brain Evolution of a Social Animal First Homo Sapiens appeared about 200, 000 years ago (previously thought to be 160, 000 years ago) (Brown, 2005) Homo sapiens =wise hu...

Introductory Sociology Lecture 1 Tim MacNeill https://www.timmacneill.com/ Introduction: The Social Brain Evolution of a Social Animal First Homo Sapiens appeared about 200, 000 years ago (previously thought to be 160, 000 years ago) (Brown, 2005) Homo sapiens =wise humans =Humans with big brains Groups slowly get bigger – humans seem to need to spend about 20% of their time grooming/preening. Releases oxytocin – the bonding or “love” hormone. There is unlikely a genetic cause for even mother/daughter bonds. They arise through touch and communication (Nagasawa, 2012)  130,000 years ago some Homo Sapiens begin to talk (still some did not have language – a group in present-day Israel for example – did not talk even 100,000 years ago) Simple, descriptive language, 15 not abstract thought 00 cc Why did they talk? the most important part of their environment had become other humans Need more efficient “preening” / “grooming” (connecting / Oxytocin release) = communication Communication and Sociality are now our Primary Inherited Needs Edited Maslow’s Hierarchy of Even well-nourished human Needs: babies die without social interaction Neurons die if they can’t communicate with other neurons (Franks, 2010, Neurosociology) Example: Vikings did not eat fish!!! WTF!!??? COMMUNICAT  50,000 years ago, the brain changes its wiring to better process complicated social information (natural selection in social environment) Cultural aspects of human society appear (music, theoretical/abstract thought, man-made beads used as currency, identity, social roles & rules, symbolic cave-art, thinking beyond the present, God?. Afterlife?) Communicated ideas became so powerful, we would die or at least suffer great harm for them - God, race, country, sports teams. (note: Soccer War Honduras/El Salvador 1969 / Vikings and fish) 20,000 years ago: our brains began to shrink! From 1500 cubic centimetres to below 1400cc Reason 1, specialization and networked thought: As complex societies emerged, the brain became smaller because people did not have to be as smart to stay alive. As Geary explains, individuals who would not have been able to survive by their wits alone could scrape by with the help of others. Especially important: Specialized knowledge, Written language Earliest known: Sumerian (Iraq); about 5000 years ago Reason 2: multitasking is making us stupid Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT and one of the world experts on divided attention, says that our brains are “not wired to multitask well… When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.” Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation. To make matters worse, the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new – the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens Russ Poldrack, a neuroscientist at Stanford, found that learning information while multitasking causes the new information to go to the wrong part of the brain. If students study and watch TV at the same time, or check email while in lecture, for example, the information from their schoolwork goes into the striatum, a region specialised for storing new procedures and skills, not facts and ideas. Without the distraction of TV, the information goes into the hippocampus, where it is organised and categorised in a variety of ways, making it easier to retrieve.  Need to communicate Empathy Biological Traits Altruism We Inherited Mirror neurons help us to achieve altruism this by helping us to actually feel sensations that (and share with all other people feel (empathize) social creatures) Sense of equality Sense of Morality and Fairness Emotion – we are not rational! (and this is often a good thing) Neural conduits for transmitting emotional information are much faster than those that think rationally. And our “rational” mind is most often used to “rationalize” decisions to ourselves that we actually made emotionally.  Intersubject hipster man” ivity Example: “I am a Canadian All of experience is perceived inside the human brain, but the rules of this perception are absorbed from the outside. I feel like an individual even though I am socially produced. And I help socially produce the other individuals in my society  Biggest Question of our Time: Has the social human brain evolved enough to solve all of the problems it has created? Use your sociological imagination: become aware of the social causes for things, and for the social solutions (C. Wright Mills) Key Questions for using your sociological imagination: Who wins/loses in this social arrangement? What imagined social concepts are creating/defining this situation?  What is sociology? It is a science of studying human behaviour and beliefs that is premised on the assumption that interaction between human-beings impacts these behaviours and beliefs It is the study of human beings as social creatures Sociologists study major areas like Individual cognitive development Culture Politics Economics The most thorough sociology combines the study of these major areas E.g. Global Environmental “crisis”