h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The male groin question is still unsolved..so onto something more personal.

Leaving out people such as myself with bipolar and people on the more autistic wing, why would the human brain have evolved such they some people can be very emotional and have trouble controlling their powerful emotions..and yet other of the same species have no trouble whatsoever..almost to be like chalk and cheese.

Obviously nurture and environment also plays a role in terms of the effects on the developing brain as well as genetics.

But there is an obvious genetic component.

Would it benefit a hunter/gatherer group to have both types of people?

Or is it just a case of evolution in a transition so eventually one type of brain will come to be the main feature of Homo sapiens..or whatever species eventually emerges after us?

I've often wondered why people fixate on hunting and gathering. That way of living is a tiny, tiny part of the history of our species. It's probably a relatively trivial part of it, compared to some of the other leaps we have made.

We evolved to be hunters and gatherers which were for hundreds of thousands of years.

We only settled since Neolithic times..an eye blink.

DNA always made that point. It's not fixated for any reason other than our evolutionary biology.

And this is the SEx area..so I posed the question here.

>>Leaving out people such as myself with bipolar and people on the more autistic wing<<

If you insist, but I rather think it's when the systems are in a colloquial sense 'broken' producing an anomalie like an autistic child that that you peer further into the architecture of what makes us "us" - the stuff about mirror neurones in monkeys us and autistic is compelling evidence of how that condition arises but also more importantly how the brain operates when it isn't autistic.

Moving on...

Well the utlity of emotions I think if I give an example feelings like fear, for instance, are very good at protecting us from harm. from this you can intuit a fairly sensible programme for survival.

Fear didn't come about in order to protect an organism, but it has that function so it's utility keeps it around.

There will be variations in what triggers a fearful response and that could lead to differential survival. (where something too timid flees from the water-hole at the first disturbing noise and so ultimately dies malnourished and thirsty.

Now kick that up a level in humans how have larger cortexes and do stuff with them like reflecting on their emotional drives and coming up with post-hoc rationalisations for why they think a certain thing but really what they are doing is rationalising an emotion.

So an emotion like "guilt" a fear of getting caught - I was discussing with a colleqague at work the other day whether cats can feel guilty - she felt adamant that they did becuase of the way the cat's behaviour changed from dominance to submission when it had (from a human's point of view) misbehaved.

I was sceptical, but I think guilt being more complex an emotion probably requires a complex brain to get there - but dominance and submission are well established social behaviours in hierarchical animal societies.

And I think here we come to glimpse what might be an answer - that humans being so social have a wide range of social emotions that go far beyond dominance and submission, alphas and even proto-guilt.

Why should some people have more difficulty than others with this? I am tempted to just say variation, in the same way that fear could vary in a group, so the network of neurones that control emotions being complex can throw up the occasional extreme. It's not broken as in Autism, it's just skewed.

Speaking NOT as being knowledgeable but having a low-level interest:

Bipolar I know nothing about except that it can be ... well, uncomfortable in the extreme on regaining balance.

Autism I know little about but attended a lecture a couple of weeks ago and it seems that it's viewed as er, let's say miswiring rather than an evolvutionary thing - some connections (a few or many, depending on your place in the spectrum) go to the wrong places.

On reflection, that's not so surprising given the complexity of the easy bit (the body) but when contemplating the brain... well...

Effer's favourite Dr Dawkins () here in a discussion with Randolph Nesse; I think you might like what they have to say on the topic of "anxiety".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDF8nAd0pbk (1 of 4)

The 'fixation' on hunter/gatherers is not as disingenuous as you might thing. That is what we evolved to be, it is what we're still evolved to be. Culturally, technologically and dietarily we have progressed faster than we're actually evolving.

In the Judge Dredd comics they have a mental illness called 'Future Shock Syndrome' where the sheer intensity of life in the Mega Cities drives people insane... I think the modern capacity to pour out emotion is something similar to that; brains which are best equipped to deal with a simple, tribal life living off the land are being constantly bombarded with, well, everything. All at once. All the time. I think the people who don't show these emotions simply have better natural self-discipline than others (or they're sociopaths).

>The 'fixation' on hunter/gatherers is not as disingenuous as you might thing. That is what we evolved to be, it is what we're still evolved to be. Culturally, technologically and dietarily we have progressed faster than we're actually evolving.<

It might not be disengenuous but it might well be wrong. This is a science forum and hard science deals with facts as far as possible.

It may very well be a reasonable assumption that many of our traits have evolved to make us the perfect hunter gatherer, but until someone can actually prove it, it remains an assumption upon which everything else deduced from that hangs.
It is not a fact and hence I readily concur with the caution ascribed to it above.

That doesn't mean I don't agree with the assumption either by the way.

Aside from that I don't really have anything to add as I know next to jaff all about brain 'chemistry'.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/12/do-we-want-to-be-supersize-humans/we-still-have-the-bodies-of-hunter-gatherers

Obviously not a proper scientific paper but I figure a professor of evolutionary biology has some idea what they're talking about.

"why would the human brain have evolved such they some people can be very emotional and have trouble controlling their powerful emotions..and yet other of the same species have no trouble whatsoever"

Leaving aside the evo-psych stuff which, whilst interesting, isn't evidence or testable, the evolution question asked is, to my understanding of it, making some assumptions I don't think are correct.

Firstly, the human brain is still evolving (I know you know this, just putting it on paper as it were).
Secondly, there is no fixed or normal template for the brain (or any other part). Your brain is not my brain in many, many ways.

One of the key things about evolving organisms is that they aren't fixed. They're a point in time. If you like, you have to think of 'evolving' as a ability that such organisms have. And in order to evolve, things have to be flexible and changeable. That humans are so adaptable (both physically and socially) is because we are so flexible - or, in other words, changeable. There is the potential within our makeup for all sorts of variations.

Taken into consideration along with the environment, at any one time a particular mutation (or variation) can confer an advantage, a disadvantage or be neutral.

So back to the original question - and the answer is that we are all variations. In some, those variations mean that they have more trouble with their emotions (interaction with environment playing an important part of such variation). Others have a variation such that they control them more easily.

Evolution isn't all about 'this evolved because it is useful' but rather 'this variation occurred and either conferred an advantage or at least did not kill the host before reproduction and thus continued'. People who have trouble with emotions still reproduce, continuing their genetic line. It isn't that there is a benefit to it, it's just that it isn't enough of a negative to stop them reproducing. And of course it isn't just one or the other but all sorts of variations. And who knows, there might be some benefit. That some will have variations which make life harder for them is simply a consequence of the variability of the human phenotype.

Benefits of what might be seen by many as problems is a very interesting area of theory. And gives me the opportunity to post this very interesting lecture on Evolution, religion, schizophrenia and the schizotypal personality again
http://blip.tv/enneagon/sapolsky-on-religion-2215838

>That doesn't mean I don't agree with the assumption either by the way.<

Aside from brain chemistry interesting me specifically for personal reasons...I do think it's more important than things like how tall or small you are...or any number of other variables.

It seems to me one of the most fundamental reasons for Homo sapiens success as a species is to do with their ability to bond and form close knit groups and societies..obviously traditionally extended family based. But also being able to build alliances with other groups is important.

It is speculated that the reason Homo sapiens was so successful when it arrived in Europe compared to Homo neanderthalis was that the group co-operative trait was so strong. And that H. sapiens were able to gather around a symbolic totem and fight for that.

That is H. sapiens had this thing called 'culture' which their brains were capable of making..which gave them a big advantage over H.neanderthalis..despite the fact that species had already been in Europe for tens of thousands years..

Strong emotions help with intense bonding. But too strong and they become destructive to social cohesion.

(Yes I know this stuff is a bit evo pysch..but hey lets play a bit and not worry too much...and maybe speculate.

Most other questions here seem to revolve around a degree of speculation in any case...but at least in this part of h2g2 we can keep our 'scientific hats' on as much as poss.)

Culturally, Neanderthals seemed to be doing quite well. Burial customs, including grave goods, music, paintings, tools and it seems the biological ability to speak and communicate. Biologically, their brains were larger than ours and it seems just as complex, they certainly seem to have had all the biological components for complex thought that we have.

Whether they formed bonds outside the immediate group, well. A lot of the research is still quite recent. I do recall a find somewhere where it seemed there were out of family members there - but I can't recall or find the study to see why they thought that.

I'm not so sure that our social ability was so key. Plenty of animals are very social (some more so than us) yet haven't acheived what we have (this may, or may not, be seen as a plus for us!) Our ability live quite long and have multiple off-spring over quite a long time, our ability to protect them and our ability to adapt to many different and varied environments, and to survive there, are what I think was key.

As for the role and relative importance of emotions, that's quite a broad subject within psychology. Personally, they ain't as important to me and I think they often obscure and prevent clear thinking, but that is personal opinion. There's quite a strong case for emotions to be seen as important in learning rather than in communication, and to have developed from there. And, of course, emotions may well be actually culturally contextual. Whilst studies often rely on facial expression recognition, or emotional terms within a language which may well introduce other errors than merely not recognising the emotion itself, it does seem only some emotions are universal.
And, of course, culture affects the response to emotion. So in meeting new groups, emotions and expressions thereof can actually impede communication due to the differing culture understanding of what the other means and how that should be correctly responded to.

There is brain chemistry (neurotransmitters and blockers, homeostasis etc) and there is brain architecture (structural units, arrangement of neural links etc). Both are relevant.

You don't say...

I'm too busy with dealing with water in my ear at present.

And hoping it doesn't leak inwards

Also last night I felt like I'd ejected half my brains into a tissue from a sinus thing at the end of a cold..

Can't argue with what you said, Stone Art (don't know enough, so I'll believe you, for the moment) but where do we go from here?

There's also environment, which is very important. Both from the dramatic - brain structure and chemistry is all very well until you end up with an axe in your head - and the subtle - life experiences, social environment and so on. Tis phenotype that is important, rather than just genotype.

#17 "... but where do we go from here?"

Maybe someone like Dogster could recommend a book / scientific review that covers all the latest findings regarding human brain function. "Emotion" appears to be associated with "lower brain" function, the hypothalamus and limbic system together with body hormones. Presumably emotion is a form of "unthinking subconscious activity" that helps to create (animalistic) drive / directed action within the organism.

No good suggestions I'm afraid...