By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Duke neuroscientist, Michael Platt, has an intriguing theory. What if altruism isn’t just learned at your mother’s knee but is really a result of evolved brain chemistry? In a study he co-authored and published in the journal, Nature Neuroscience, Platt wondered why certain primates act unselfishly. Animal behaviorists have long known that monkeys will go without food rather than see a member of their species shocked, and mice will starve to avoid hurting other mice. Major news stories around the world have told the tales of animals risking their own safety to protect humans and other animals. In one recent episode, Binti Jua, a female gorilla saved a three-year-old boy from other gorillas when he fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Brookline Zoo. In another, a dog in Chile dodged traffic on a busy freeway to drag his canine companion to safety after it had been struck and rendered unconscious.
What isn’t known is the basis for this animal “morality.” Some scientists have theorized that this altruism is the result of emotions or simply instinct. But Platt thinks the answer may lie deep in the recesses of the brain. Using rhesus monkeys because of their similarity to humans both anatomically and physiologically, Platt and his colleagues set up a simple experiment. Monkeys were shown computer images which when correctly identified resulted in a squirt of tasty juice coming their way. The monkeys quickly caught on that correct answers rendered a direct benefit. Then, the researchers changed the rules of the game. Instead of a correct answer getting the test subject a tasty squirt of juice, it resulted in one for their neighbor. Of course, the monkey had the choice to give no juice to their neighbor at all by simply refusing to play or answer incorrectly. The deciding monkeys consistently showed a pattern of doling out juice to their friends And lest you think the other monkeys merely liked seeing the juice squirt anywhere, the experiment didn’t work when the scientists replaced the fellow primate with a bottle of juice as the beneficiary.
During the experiment, the scientists connected brain monitors to the monkeys to record any neuronal activity. What they found suggests that brain chemistry plays an important role in just how empathetic the primates behaved. Platt concentrated his attention on a region of the brain known as the orbitofrontal cortex, which is known to play a role in reward processing. He found that when monkey benefited themselves, neurons in a region called the anterior cingulate gyrus fired, but when the monkeys helped their friends different cells in the same area fired. Platt suggests that this rendering of pleasure from helping others may serve as the chemical basis for altruism. He even speculates that the finding has carry-over effects to human behavior. Believing that the orbitofrontal cortex encodes vicarious experiences which account for happiness and sadness, he theorizes that “vicarious experience and reward is perhaps what actually drives giving behavior and perhaps drives charity in people.”
Could the lack of this neuronal activity account for selfishness? If so, could its utter absence make a human a sociopath? The answer lies down the road but it could have a dramatic impact on the way we view human behavior and hence the consequences for that behavior.
Sources: msnbc and throughout
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
NickS; Be left alone. Yes, so did Einstein, but he sought daily companionship too. That is an idea I support, and that alone does not equate to anti-social. It is hallowed in our Declaration and our Constitution.
To each to act in response to his own conscience.
MikeS, Yes, it is indeed a glorious thing when we succeed. But tolerance when we don’t is also necessary. A point which I think you made.
Messpo. Thanks.
Condescending, an interesting word. Con=with. Descend=to go down literally or figuratively. Have we forgotten that we do it at our own danger?
Bron,
“People work for friends and family, not for strangers. People will help strangers in distress but that dosent mean they would support them above their friends and families all of the time.”
Hope my comment above helps. And yes, we are more complex and can make more complex decisions than cells.
@Dredd and others who want to go further back in our evolution.
For impatient monkeys, here is the link and then the presentation lecture. 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg
That we are here at all, we multicelled, with specialized organs which cooperate in sustaining a higher form(?) are proof that we are altruistic.
Or at least symbiotic at the cell level.
Single cells do communicate their presence, thus encouraging controlled growth and mutual protection by emitting protective toxins together when one emits an alarm chemical signal. Oak trees do the same, and we do too.
The HOW LIFE BEGAN (abiogenesis) as studied by a Nobel prize winner can be interesting. It is a very good but fast-paced presentation here. Full of very basic thoughts. So stop it temporarily to allow thinking time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg
Note I said incorrectly evolution, as the first creation, abiogenesis, is not a common term. Cleverly explained in the video.
rafflaw, I think it’s a push. However, MikeS has to have a great voice to compare to Burt’s.
Mike S.,
You are much better looking than Burt Lancaster! 🙂
“You are much better looking than Burt Lancaster! :)”
Raff,
On my best day I never was close to Burt in looks, or in “cool”, but I did love “Elmer Gantry” 🙂
MikeS, It comes from your authoritarian, Group=Good, Individual=Bad. I want both, I want a world where someone can not be part of your “herd” and be left alone if they desire. And where judgemental people like yourself don’t consider them defective or bad. To each their own. Walden Pond was embraced by the left in my youth..now it’s shunned.
“MikeS, It comes from your authoritarian, Group=Good, Individual=Bad. I want both, I want a world where someone can not be part of your “herd” and be left alone if they desire.”
Nick,
What I find most funny about you is that even though I put my thinking completely out in the open, your projection onto my thought is always wrong. Give me the quote where I ever stated anything like what you put into my mouth and my thoughts above.
Bron,
Yes, but then he is not a wolf. Ask this lone wolf, who hopefully has found a pack. 😉
a lone wolf can survive if it learns to hunt on its own as do mountain lions and bears.
men can also survive without society. But society [a collection of individuals] makes life easier for the individual.
I am a prisoner being forced to do stupid experiments and I give my buddies juice and I am an altruist? No, I am sticking it to my tormentors and taking care of my friends.
If altrusim was the natural state of mankind, communism would be heaven and it isnt.
I have read about chimps getting really po’ed because one got a cake and one didnt.
People work for friends and family, not for strangers. People will help strangers in distress but that dosent mean they would support them above their friends and families all of the time.
MikeS, You are Elmer Gantry today. Who the f@ck wants a world where everyone is “good” and the same. There can be no light w/o dark, no good w/o evil, and no life w/o death. Now please condescend, you’re so cool when you condescend, Mr. Ivy League master!
“MikeS, You are Elmer Gantry today. Who the f@ck wants a world where everyone is “good” and the same. There can be no light w/o dark, no good w/o evil, and no life w/o death. Now please condescend, you’re so cool when you condescend, Mr. Ivy League master!”
Nick,
I “love” it when you add implications to what I write that don’t exist in what I actually write. A world where “everyone is good”? Where does that even come from? I really don’t mind people disagreeing with me, but I hate when they disagree with something I neither said, nor implied, yet ascribe their response as “refuting” my positions..
Reblogged this on herlander-walking.
For humans the reward is the knowledge that you have helped another, not just the expectation of a concrete reward. I often think it has been taught out of us, news for instance telling the story, as news, and therefore the uncommon, when someone returns a wallet full of money etc. I am always astounded, though I no longer should be, at the people who rep;y to these stories, even the newscasters, with a ” how dare the person not get a gigantic reward”. Whatever happened to ‘kindness is its own reward’?
So.. the monkeys “helped others” because they themselves received a benefit. That’s not “selfishness”? 🙂
I’m not surprised that animals, us included, are inherently motivated to propagate the species, or even “life”. In so many survival instances for so many species , the desire to help others would be beneficial to both themselves, their “pack”, and their species in general.
Interesting experiment. I wonder if squirting the juice at others also implies they do so with an expectation that others will at some future point squirt juice to them. When it’s their turn, perhaps?
I also wonder if they measured which reward pulses in the brain were more powerful, the “I gave myself juice” button or the “I gave someone else juice” button? What if there were two buttons… one for squirting into their own mouth, and one for squirting into the other monkeys? Which would they choose?
Mark,
Love this piece because it gives lie to the idea that humans succeed best when we “go it alone” because that is our natural state. We are by every scientific definition “social animals”, who succeed as members of a society.
As an analogy regarding our genetic inheritance, think of the characterization of someone as a “lone wolf”. Give that the long existence of the wolf species itself is due to the closeness of pack behavior, “lone wolf” is a pejorative applied to a creature with minimal chances of survival.
The joy of helping people crates memories that last a lifetime. Strong stuff, that!
Very interesting Mark. Maybe if we regress a little towards the apes, we can actually move forward as a species!
I love this topic. There is so much joy in just helping people. I often wonder if the people who are selfish understand this very basic concept or if they simply don’t get that joy reward from being kind. We are hard wired, some say 80-90%. You see that when you have kids.
Even microbes have been noted for altruism, the opposite of selfishness.
A noted psychiatrist, who does a lot of reading of scientific papers, noted:
(Searching For The Mind). Microbes take part in the formation of the human brain.
This might work better:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/dolphins-give-humans-gifts_n_2372219.html
Saw a story at Huffington Post recently about dolphins bringing gifts of food from the sea to researchers who’ve been studying them for some time.
Wild Dolphins Give Gifts To Researchers Studying Them In …
1 day ago … ‘Tis the season for giving, but in Australia, wild dolphins have been documented offering gifts to the researchers studying them for quite some …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/dolphins-give-humans-gifts