{"id":1072,"date":"2014-02-16T19:49:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T02:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2014-02-21T08:54:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T15:54:02","slug":"what-it-means-to-have-something-hardwired-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/what-it-means-to-have-something-hardwired-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"What it Means to Have Something “Hardwired” (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"neurons.1\"<\/a>\u00a0Listen to psychologists talk and you will often hear about how some behavior or attitude is “hardwired.”\u00a0 It’s a pretty descriptive term – particularly since the brain is an organ characterized by electrical circuits.\u00a0 For another example, just consider the most popular adage among neuroscientists over the past dozen years or so, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”\u00a0 It suggests a certain immutable permanence in ways we think or act.\u00a0 Consider all the incredible identical twin studies in which they are separated at birth and meet decades later to find that they are wearing the same color, are married to women with the same name, pursue the same career and have named their children identically.\u00a0 One great example involves two brothers reunited after 39 years.\u00a0 Each was incredibly fastidious and detailed – compulsively neat and orderly in every respect.\u00a0 They were both completely convinced that their character was a function of nurture rather than nature.\u00a0 The first was asked why he was like that and he replied, “My mother is the reason!\u00a0 She was exactly the same way and I was raised to be compulsively neat.”\u00a0 The other replied, “My mother is the reason!\u00a0 She was so disorganized and such a slob that I had <\/em>to be this way just to survive.”<\/p>\n

Among the researchers who have been studying the brain’s inherent (“hardwired”) character is a man named Jaak Panksepp.\u00a0 His work with animals is incredible.\u00a0 One fascinating observation he shares in his book Affective Neuroscience – The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions<\/em> involves the problem they had with rats who were very distressed and active after their cages were cleaned by a certain lab tech.\u00a0 After some investigation, they found that the tech had housecats and some of the dander was carried with him to the lab.\u00a0 What is fascinating is that these rats were born and bred in the lab.\u00a0 They had never seen a cat in their lives….nor had their parents or grandparents.\u00a0 They had been separated from actual exposure to a natural predator\u00a0 by many generations.\u00a0 Still, they reacted strongly to the scent of the cat.\u00a0 That’s one great example of being “hardwired.”\u00a0 What is even more important for us, is that Panksepp has found that certain emotions are hardwired into our brains.\u00a0 This will be the subject of a later post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Listen to psychologists talk and you will often hear about how some behavior or attitude is “hardwired.”\u00a0 It’s a pretty descriptive term – particularly since the brain is an organ characterized by electrical circuits.\u00a0 For another example, just consider the most popular adage among neuroscientists over the past dozen years or so, “Neurons that fire Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,14],"tags":[29,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/josephshaub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}