But then it got co-opted for trust and oxytocin or something with that.
And then it turns out we did something totally bizarre in the last 20,000 years
when you stared into the eyes of your beloved dog.
Both you and the dog secrete oxytocin.
And if you pump up oxytocin levels in your dog,
your dog stares at you longer and your oxytocin levels go higher.
Wait, this is this hormone that existed for
100 million years so that mommies and babies hook up.
And now we're doing it without pet and somehow that’s been co-opted.
And now it turns out when you give somebody oxytocin
they believe a political speech more, they believe a sales pitch more.
There’s a new field called neuro marketing where people are interested in that.
Oxytocin makes you much nicer to in group members but
it makes you more rotten to out group members, this is just of course.
>> [LAUGH] I think most people know your name because of your work with baboons.
Could you speak a little bit about that research and
how it might relate to our questions?
>> Well, baboons are distinctively bereft of things that would,
I think pass for love or compassion or- >> [LAUGH]
>> Or fellow feeling.
I've studied baboons populations about in East Africa in the Serengeti on and
off for about 35 years now.
I go back and forth to the same animals.
And what I've studied over the years is,
what does your social rank and what does your personality,
which is a real scientific word when it comes to other species, not just us.
And what does the social group that you live in
have to do with who gets the stress related diseases?
Who's got the high blood pressure?
Who's gotten the rotten cholesterol levels?
And what I thought I was mostly studying at the beginning is
why is it that being a high ranking baboon does great things for your health?
What it took me about 30 years to figure out is the much more interesting and
important question is to ask, why is it that a baboon
who has social affiliations and social connections has better health?
We've known forever if you were chronically stressed that
does rotten things to your learning and memory.
It does bad things to anxiety levels.
It predisposes us towards learning to be afraid of things that we shouldn't.
It predisposes us towards depression,
it works in the frontal cortex to make our judgement terrible.
But it's only more recent work, and this has been from a few groups,
including mine, looking at a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate.
It's perfect cortex and if you want an incredibly like simplified soundbite as to
what it has to do with any of this stuff, it's got something to do with empathy.
>> [LAUGH] >> Poke somebody's finger with a pin and
all sorts of pain related pathways in the brain activate,
including the anterior cingulate.
It's not telling you whether it's this finger or
this finger which is in pain, it's telling you what the meaning is of it.
It's a more integrative cortical part of the brain.
Now instead poke the fingertip of your loved one, and
watch that, and the anterior cingulate activates.
The parts of the brain that are saying, was it my finger or my toe?
They're sound asleep, this isn't their problem.
But it's the anterior cingulate.
It's got something to do with empathy.
>> Empathy is one thing, compassion is another.