Humans are highly social
beings. We like to be surrounded by friends and share our personal experiences
with others. The recent appearance of various social networking tools, and
their adoption at a virtually explosive rate, nicely illustrate the strong and
fundamental human desire for social belonging and interpersonal exchange. I’ve
been writing about the social brain for years – as well, our fascination with
the celebrity subculture.
In most cases, this is perfectly
natural. The social creatures in us live in an environment where it paid to pay
attention to the people at the top. Celebrity fascination may be an outgrowth
of this tendency, nourished by the media and technology. So a chance meeting
with Peter Fitzsimons recently redirected my thoughts – asking myself what I’ve
really learned about the Human psyche and what is arguably the most complex of
systems – our cerebrum.
We know that evolutionary processes have
favored the development of complex social behaviours in humans, along with the
brain architecture that supports them. The Human brain is of course as compared
to other primates and mammals of similar size. This is particularly interesting
because the neocortex comprises many of the brain areas involved in higher
social cognition, such as conscious thought, language, behavioral and emotion
regulation, as well as empathy and theory of mind - our ability to understand
the feelings and intentions of others. We are, so to speak, biologically hardwired
for interacting with others, and are thus said to be endowed with a social
brain.
No comments:
Post a Comment