“Testosterone makes people cocky, egocentric, and narcissistic.”Ĭhapter 15: Metaphors We Kill By: How Rwandan genocide came to be and how metaphors were used as a weapon. And veryy long term LTP and LTD and how they work differently in different regions of our brains. Chapter 5: Days to Months Before: Enough time for Arab spring, for a discontented winter or for STDs to spread a lot during a summer of love…and also plenty of time for our brains to change…How there’s long-term LTP and LTD. Here are some of my picks throughout the chapters of the book:Ĭhapter 4: Hours to Days Before: How testosterone increases confidence and optimism and decreases fear and anxiety. I learned so much and it also changed the way I see some things. It’s stunning, it’s big and it’s absolutely beautiful. Sapolsky continues by how environment affects us and also focuses on age-old question: are we formed more by nature or nurture? And indeed as mentioned, then we continue with psychology, history, culture…īehave is among the best nonfiction reads ever. We start with neurobiological angle: what happens in our brains when some specific behavior occurs, what effect do our hormones have on us, what is our genetic makeup, how are we different or even not that different from rest of the animal kingdom… This is not enough. That is to look at our behavior from every possible angle: biological, psychological, physiological…and there are some historical and cultural angles thrown in to it too. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worstīook focuses on Robert Sapolsky’s attempt to tackle seemingly impossible question. “Someone does something lousy and selfish to you in a game, and the extent of insular and amygdaloid activation predicts how much outrage you feel and how much revenge you take.”

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst is a book by American author Robert Maurice Sapolsky.

Behave sapolsky book