See Also: Book Notes, Conceptual Spaces Cheat Sheet, Swarm Intelligence, Blank Slate, Clock of the Long Now, Info Viz & Perception, Consciousness: a user's guide, On Intelligence, The Quest for Consciousness, The Space Between Our Ears, The Stuff of Thought.

The Neuroscience of Human Relationships:
  Attachment and the Developing Social Brain

This book is absolutely Brilliant! Cozolino presents the social brain and the "social synapse". Quote #1:

Gaze, pupil dilation, facial expressions, posture, proximity, touch, and mirror systems are all reflexive and obligatory systems that work below conscious awareness. These and other systems yet to be discovered create a high-speed information linkup between us, establishing ongoing physiological and emotional synchrony. (p.337)

GPFPTM Cheat Sheet

Notes

Making the case for the social animal talks about some of the evolutions that help the group/tribe by giving away the internal state of the individual. The two that really struck me are "the whites of our eyes" and blushing. The sclera is black in all other great apes. In humans, it is white and our eyelids show the entire width of our eyes. It is obvious what the person you are talking to is looking at. This is a specific human evolution. See: wikipedia:Cooperative_eye_hypothesis. We are the only animal that blushes. If there are only other people on our left side, we only blush on our left side! (p.162)

The brain hardware section focuses on those engines that participate in social processing the "social brain". The main structures are: orbital medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC), Somatosensory Cortex, Cingulate Cortex, Hypothalmus, Insula Cortex, Hippocampus and Amygdala. There are several other systems that are discussed. One of which is the vagus, aka tenth cranial nerve - under the heading Social Engagement System. "The vagus extends from the brainstem to multiple points within the body, including the heart, lungs, throat and digestive system." (p.60) Also, Corticotrophin releasing factor - neat; vomeronasal organ, aka Jacobsen's organ "social smells".

Regulation systems:
Stress Regulation ( the HPA (hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal) system of hormone regulations) [HPA needs to be in the index]
Fear Regulation (OMPFC-amygdala balance)
Social Engagement (the vagal system of autonomic regulation)

Social Motivation can be divided into three categories: 1) bonding and attachment (regulated by peptides, vassopressin and oxycontin), 2) attraction (dopamine and other catecholamines) and 3) sex drive (androgens and estrogens) (p.62) Table 8.1 (p.121) Biochemistry of Social Motivation summarizes. (p.120) "When you depend on a substitute for love, you never get enough"!!!

Multiple systems of memory: implicit, explicit, implicit social, explicit social.

The fight or flight mechanism depends on the sympathetic pathway of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) (p.88) [ANS should be in the index]

Right: Illustrations from Netter's (see below)
Netter's Atlas of Human Neuroscience (Netter Basic Science) David L. Felten MD PhD (Author), Ralph Jozefowicz (Author)

p.146 Table 10-1, Attachment Research, mother and child. If the mother is:
Free-Autonomous, the child is Secure - seeks proximity, easy to soothe
Mother is dismissing, the child is Avoidant - denying, minimizing
Mother is enmeshed-Ambivalent, the child is Anxious-Ambivalent, not easy to soothe, not quick to return to play
Mother is Disorganized, the child is disorganized, chaotic, self-injurious

p.157, "If people maintain eye contact for more than a couple of seconds, they will either fight, have sex, or both."

p.177 facial expressions and emotions are so hard wired that we imitate a persons facial expression to get more insight into there emotions. Awesome illustration of facial muscles from Huber 1931. Also, I thought there was a bit on microexpressions in here, but, I can't find it and it is not in the index. 20 pages is not enough for this book.

p.187 "The structures of mirror neurons are not special in and of themselves; they serve this mirroring function due to their location. The reside in association areas of the frontal cortex where networks converge to process high level information. Mirror neurons lie at the crossroads of the processing of inner and outer experience, where multiple networks of visual, motor, and emotional processing converge."

Table 13-1, Brain Regions involved in Perceptual-Action Mirror Systems. Theory of Mind (TOM) p.195

p.249 Fear (Amygdala) vs. Anxiety (Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis) Seven similar physical reactions...
Amygdala and hippocampus and cortex. Fast system vs. slow system.

p.328 "We have witnessed the enegry evolution has devoted to reading the minds of others and how little attention is has paid to self awareness."

From Neurons to Narratives. Wonderful emphasis on the importance of stories. Expanded Quote #1!

The unifying functions of stories and the healing reflected in changing narratives rests upon the underlying physiological changes that occur during healing relationships. Gaze, pupil dilation, facial expressions, posture, proximity, touch, and mirror systems are all reflexive and obligatory systems that work below conscious awareness. These and other systems yet to be discovered create a high-speed information linkup between us, establishing ongoing physiological and emotional synchrony. (p.337)

This book would REALLY benefit from better brain illustrations. The Netter image is top notch! Netter's Atlas of Human Neuroscience (Netter Basic Science) David L. Felten MD PhD (Author), Ralph Jozefowicz (Author)

Instead of rereading this book, I will probably read: The Healthy Aging Brain, SUSTAINING ATTACHMENT, ATTAINING WISDOM (2008)