INTRODUCTION

One feature that underlies cephalic regulation of behavior is the diverse social cues for approach and avoidance. The greater the sophisticated social context, the larger the cognitive/behavioral strategies to draw upon (Byrne and Bates, 2007). Behavioral approach and avoidance are both cognitively and affectively driven; all neural systems are rich in information processing, and therefore cephalic adaptation of all sorts is cognitive in nature. The issue is not really cognitive versus not cognitive, but how flexible, labile and adaptive the systems are (Gallistel, 1980).

In this chapter, I underscore the diverse information molecules that underlie adapting change or allostasis. Many of them reflect feedforward systems: steroids facilitating neuropeptide expression, adapting and coping with social change or social stability (Herbert and Schulkin, 2002). The chapter begins with a theme broached in the last chapter with regard to organization and structural changes in the brain that underlie diverse forms of social behavior, followed by a discussion of appetitive and consummatory motivated behaviors essential for successful social behavioral adaptations. I begin first with a discussion of appetitive and consummatory concepts, followed by describing socially related phenomenon.

APPETITIVE AND CONSUMMATORY BEHAVIORS

Just what are they? An early description by Craig (1918) depicted diverse appetitive approach behaviors, and consummatory behaviors in diverse species; central states of the brain underlie the search engine and the consummatory phase of motivation (Stellar, 1954). The motivation for rewards pervades ecological space.

As Aristotle noted long ago, we are, by nature, social animals. Human evolution has increased the importance of social knowledge and social context. Prosocial behavior underlies the moral sensibility that pervades human experience resulting in significant human contact.

Darwin emphasized a fundamental prosocial feature of us, essential for moral judgment. He asserted, “… any animal whatever, endowed with a well-marked social instinct, the parental and filial affections being here included would inevitably acquire a moral sense of conscience, as soon as its intellectual power had become as well or nearly as well developed as in man” (1874: 95). However, in Descent of Man, Darwin also noted the “the fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those of the lower animals” (1874: 65).

Adapting to the social milieu is a fundamental feature of our species. Darwin, like others before and since, understood that we are social animals. What has emerged in Homo sapiens has been an elaboration of social contact, the expansion of individual responsibility manifested in specific types of the division of labor in the service of group safety and human well-being and productivity. There has also been a technical expansion resulting in the development of a diverse supply of cognitive resources, including cognitive resources which pitted, at times, deception against social cooperation as conflicting motivations (Dunbar and Shultz, 2007).

INTRODUCTION

We have come to realize, as a normative goal, that social hope is our common bond – the dilution of differences that divide and harm us. The path of human progress is frail; with glimmers of hope, the eternal seduction, the stoic nobility exists amidst the diffidence and difficulties in preserving a broad social compass in which many reach forms of meaningful human happiness rich in existential sensibility.

However, there is no panacea; the idea of progress that infused Darwin's conception of evolution and Jackson's and Spencer's conception of the nervous system has been modified. Corticalization of function does not necessarily mean social advance. Devolution of function is as paramount as times of war and crisis.

Prosocial sensibilities figure importantly and are a constant across cultures, but they compete with diverse motivations. Variation in expression is a constant, but social contact is also a factor across all cultures, and the formation of habits sets the conditions for meaningful lasting social contact (Jaspers, 1913/1997).

EVOLUTION AND ADAPTATION

At one fundamental level, little has changed: we search for the stable amidst the precarious (Dewey, 1925/1989). The search requires diverse cephalic and cultural resources, and results in punctuated and gradual cultural epicenters. The human condition remains more precarious, our weapons that much more dangerous, and the level of potential destruction that much greater. The precarious shifts towards the more stable by cephalic adaptation.

INTRODUCTION

We live in a social world with exorbitant and ever-present rewards: from chocolates to stocks, from achievement to thermal comfort. The search for reward is a constant occupation. It is not very surprising that for centuries the concept of reward and human occupation have gone hand in hand in defining our existence, and of course, more than one species is characterized by the search for satisfaction and the avoidance of what is not pleasing.

Diverse theories about pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance have dominated our intellectual landscape. Hedonism, in both its ancient and modern forms, describes the endless human search for what feels good and the avoidance of what does not. In the broadest sense, hedonic theories are not wrong when construed in terms of the search for satisfaction; but narrowly construed, on the model of a piece of chocolate, the theory does not characterize the full range of our behavioral dispositions, nor that of other species.

Abstract atoms of sensation cauterized from classical hedonism through David Hume (1984/1739) have never done full conceptual justice to the concept of objects. It is objects that orient us, not simple sensation. We are rooted in a world of objects. It is the sight of the bear that renders us afraid, setting off the transduction mechanisms in a well-designed cephalic system to detect and avoid danger. We are oriented towards the object of fear, not its sensation. That is not to deny sensation, for surely that would be a false claim.

INTRODUCTION

A key feature in evolution is how well the behavioral/physiological adaptation works, and how flexible the particular adaptation can be when expanded into diverse contexts. Our evolution reveals a conception, not always accurate, that rigidity is a feature of lower species, whereas flexibility is a feature of primates such as us. Corticalization of function reflects the larger role that social, cognitive and anticipatory regulation of the social and internal milieu play in the organization of behavioral and physiological viability (James, 1890/1952).

Responding to diverse social signals requires a flexible brain with a range of behavioral options. Our evolution is linked to our cognitive competence and one feature of this is our social contact, both cooperative and competitive. Competition often requires cooperative understanding to ensure success, depending upon one's view of evolution and the cultural context in which cooperation and competition are understood. Evolution has selected both and one should be wary about mythologizing one or the other in our conceptual framework. This chapter orients the reader towards several conceptions of evolution and their importance in understanding our cephalic expansion, which underlies our diverse forms of behavioral and physiological adaptations to changing contexts.

EXPLANATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF EVOLUTION

The great taxonomists, starting from Aristotle, have created long catalogues of natural objects and, in this case, the lineages relating biological taxa and species. Recognition of kinds of objects is a predilection that comes with our cognitive endowment; we are taxonomic animals. Evolution favored this cognitive ability in our species.

INTRODUCTION

As Darwin (1859/1958) noted, social instincts are the prelude for much of what governs our social evolution; climatic variation and stability perhaps fostered group formation as an important evolutionary adaptation – linking up with others, helping them, being helped. Of course the debate over the extent to which our behavior is governed by instincts has had a long and torturous history (James, 1890/1952). The social instincts are used to get linked to others and are bound to the development of a variety of social cognitive skills used to deceive (Mithen, 1996), trust, and engage in both social contact and social withdrawal. However, these instincts lie mostly in the formation of important alliances that underlie our cognitive evolution, amidst language and a set of diverse cognitive adaptations that root us in the world, a world in which epistemological and practical action predominate.

Both cultural and physiological/ecological stability are important factors in our evolution as are the diverse forms of adaptations that underlie coping with periods of non-stability. The search for stability and coherence amidst social insecurity is a fundamental feature that underlies human motivation and social investigation. In this chapter, I begin with an orientation of neuronal structure and function; a changing sense of our understanding of the organization of action through envisioning both the motor regions and limbic regions (e.g. information molecules that changed our conception of the classical limbic system) is vital for the expanding cognitive adaptations that figure in our social attachments and the allocation of cognitive resources for sustaining viable responses to changing landscapes.

INTRODUCTION

Diverse regions of the brain are essential for action and are often activated earlier than the action themselves; regions of the brain such as the basal ganglia (Swanson, 2000) are bound to diverse forms of cognitive actions, including prosocial ones. Diverse information molecules underlie prosocial behaviors (e.g. oxytocin, vasopressin, and serotonin).

A developmental perspective has emerged positing that neonates are rooted in the world of objects and transactions with others from birth (Kagan, 1984). Their aim is towards getting coherence in a social world; social cognitive dispositions predominate amongst other cognitive/physiological predilections essential for adaptation and coherence of action. Making sense of others is thus a core adaptation. So we come prepared to make sense of the objects around us – particularly con-specifics.

In this chapter, I discuss again corticalization of function, from a received view, not incorrect but perhaps overstated – namely that the cortex restrains the more primitive brain (e.g. amygdala). In addition, in this chapter, the role of diverse information molecules (oxytocin, CRH, dopamine, serotonin) in social approach and avoidance behaviors continues to be discussed, amidst a further understanding of both neocortical sites and amygdala function in the organization of action.

CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE NEOCORTEX

For over a century, we have known that cortical function is bound to more elaborate cognitive capacities; in fact, the nineteenth century was dominated by this realization. From a comparative perspective, the frontal cortex, for instance, makes transparent an expansion of the primate brain.

INTRODUCTION

Evolutionary factors leave their imprint across all life processes; one core event is the organization of the brain. Brains vary with species, with taxa; linking a conception of evolution with brain function required a conception of the nervous system, its core outline, variation and common themes (Swanson, 2000).

The nineteenth-century British neurologist J. Hughlings Jackson formulated a conception of the nervous system that places the brain within evolution; the brain is understood in terms of levels of function. The neocortex represented a crowning achievement, increasing the range of action.

This was, of course, understood for some time; Jackson's conception of the nervous system in the nineteenth century had cortical tissue, the evolutionary mantle of the brain, underlying the selection of options, in which brainstem sites carried out the basic functions. Devolution of function, typically for Jackson, was linked to forebrain damage, thereby limiting capacity and reducing behavioral options; what evolved was the range of opportunities that reflects the corticalization of function.

Of course, the mantle of progress with corticalization of function was at the center of an egocentric human conception of evolution, with social bonds, social history, human invention, rational decision forming being the pillars of social ascent. The march of progress was the conception, both in terms of biological and cultural evolution.

This is a book on expanding regulatory concepts in cognitive/physiological neuroscience to the context of social adaptation and evolution.

Our evolutionary history is rich in cephalic expansion and innervation into more and more regions of the body, and the corresponding regulation of those regions. The evolutionary history reflects both regulation of the internal and the social milieu.

In recent years, an interest in understanding something about well-being within the context of competition and cooperation has re-emerged within the biological and neural sciences. Darwin understood that prosocial inclinations are built into cephalic regulation, and that set the stage for investigating the ways in which social adaptive mechanisms are involved in establishing and maintaining well-being.

In a previous book, Rethinking Homeostasis, I discussed the concept of allostasis from the point of view of regulation of the internal milieu. In this book, I extend the concept of allostasis to the interaction of the individual with the social environment and its influence on regulation of the internal milieu. The book is grounded in an evolutionary perspective with regard to cephalic functioning – specifically to cephalic responses in managing external resources while maintaining internal viability.

An important recent trend in the neurosciences has proven fruitful and warranted: the burgeoning field of social neuroscience. This new field places an emphasis on the biological aspects of social science, including the hormonal regulation of adaptive behaviors as can be seen in the effects of hormones on the brain in generating behavioral responses that serve regulatory needs, including those knotted to the social milieu.

INTRODUCTION

Two fundamental ways of looking at the brain prevail: one is linked to chemical pathways of the brain, the other is electrical or biophysical law-like properties. One is not more valid than the other. They are just two rooted scientific approaches to understanding brain function.

Eliot Valenstein (2005), a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Michigan, in his interesting book, The War of the Soups and the Sparks, lays out the discovery process involved in the depiction of the classical neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, dopamine) and the depiction of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems and their representation in the brain. This insight into the chemical nature of the classical neurotransmitters along with the depiction of the electrophysiological properties set the conditions for understanding the brain.

My focus is on the chemical pathways of the brain and the functional role in the organization of social approach and avoidance behavioral responses (adaptive responses rooted in evolution). Social contact, in addition to the development of motor control, language and other cognitive capacities, are critical factors in our evolution. Cave paintings show a sense of the intellectual quest.

An understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems represented in both the peripheral and central nervous system underlie social attachments and all forms of regulation. A rich chemical milieu permeates these autonomic peripheral systems that underlie the diverse forms of physiological systems across end organ systems in maintaining long-term physiological stability. Importantly, the chemical messages are richly expressed in the central nervous system.