Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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Let’s sit on this little hill and watch the baboons as they walk across the veldt. There are about 30 of them in the troop, all sizes, some large adult males, some much smaller females, and plenty of juveniles of various ages. To us they look like a random bunch of monkeys, but the primatologist sitting with us has more experienced eyes. She points out that there is an organisation, though it’s not easy to see. The large males walk at the head near the middle of the group; several females surround them. On the edge of the group are other males, though they look less well-fed and in not so good condition as the glossy males in the centre. Very young baboons run around all over the place: no social barrier seems to exist for them. The troop comes across a clump of bushes bearing fruit, and stops to eat. The primatologist tells us to watch carefully. The larger males take their pick, as do some of the females with them. When they have finished, other baboons take their place. Last of all the younger, smaller, peripheral males help themselves to whatever remains. Now it’s time to drink, so the troop finds a small pool, all that is left after days of baking African sun. Again we see the larger males take their fill, followed by the others though we also notice that size is not the only criterion that seems to matter. Occasionally we hear the characteristic screech of an aggressive baboon, and see one or other animal running away, but mostly all is quiet and seemingly peaceful. We borrow binoculars off our primatologist friend, and take a closer look………
Our primary aim is to understand what part the brain …. detects and determines the social hierarchy. How it allows an individual to survive in a competitive environment. How complex information about the social milieu of an individual regulates those parts of the brain that are responsible for meeting basic demands. Is an individual’s physiology related to his/her rank? If so, how does the brain arrange this? ......... To begin, we need to think about the role of the brain in aggression……
Fear is a natural response to aggression and inextricably linked with it. Without fear, the subordinate male baboon threatened by the larger, more dominant one would neither run away nor display the characteristic behavioural traits of fearfulness. The latter may placate the aggressor; submission is
a common way to resolve
a conflict without coming to blows in humans as well as baboons.
Without submitting, our little baboon is in acute danger
from those stiletto-like canines. So we also need to know
whether there are special areas of the brain that recognise aggression
in others and formulate an appropriate and biologically sensible
response. The function of fear is not limited to social
interactions and the maintenance of the social hierarchy. Fear of
unknown places, strangers, and possible predators, are all just as
important. Most studies of fear in the laboratory have little
interest in the biological use of fear and how it may differ….. In 1939 a psychologist (Heinrich Kluver) who was interested in perception, teamed up with a neurosurgeon (Paul Bucy) and they removed both temporal lobes from rhesus monkeys. The result was an extraordinary collection of abnormal behaviours now always called the Kluver-Bucy syndrome...... The lesioned monkeys tended to put anything and everything into their mouths (‘oral tendencies’), and there was a remarkable increase in indiscriminate sexual behaviour (hypersexuality: they tried to mate with anything that moved). All this was interesting enough, but they also showed something else: a striking decrease in fear….
….now you have to imagine yourself sitting companionably drinking a cup of coffee with a couple of friends. Suddenly the door bursts open and a man enters carrying a gun. Did I forget to mention that you are hooked up to a machine that measures your physiological response? And t
hat you are in Belfast or Beirut in
the 1970s? Your heart rate doubles, your blood pressure rises, levels
of adrenaline in your blood increase, your face becomes pale, you feel
the emotion of extreme fear, and even let out a half-smothered
shriek. You fear for your life. Now suppose all this
happens exactly as before, but this time you are actually taking part
in a play, and the man with the gun is supposed to enter at that
moment. No fear this time, though you, a rather good actor, may
feign it convincingly. Let’s try to analyse what has
happened in the brain during each scenario…… Most violent crime is committed by young men…… The interesting thing is that, as with sex, aggressive male brains are made and not born. Give a newborn female rat some testosterone just after birth (rats are born in a very immature state). Wait until she grows up and give her another shot of testosterone. Now she shows much more aggression when she’s with other rats than ‘controls’ (ie, normal female mice)….
This is not a book about the sociology of war, or even the psychology of war, but if we are to ask meaningful questions about the role of the brain in the phenomenon of war, we have to consider how it might differ from inter-personal aggression….. We should not assume that conflict between social groups relies on the same brain mechanisms as conflict within them……. The study of the way that the limbic system regulates inter-personal aggression will not help our understanding of the role of the brain in war very much, even though it’s activity during war may play a large part in an individual’s behaviour. Since war is a pervasive feature of human history, with obvious survival value, it is time we learned more about how the brain determines why we go to war and when.
Scientific and literary quotes.