One idea is that emotions in humans are the result of our conscious detection of these internal states. As our cortex has developed, our capacity for self-awareness of our internal states has increased to the point where we are often able to feel and report them.
In my opinion, a major goal of emotional behaviour research is to discover methods to increase awareness of our internal states and reduce the suffering they impart. The basic architecture of the system — the brain regions involved and their connections — was worked out in the s and 90s using classic anatomical methods.
At the moment we are in a second phase of discovery where we are applying new genetic tools — optogenetics, pharmacogenetics, and neural activity imaging — to identify the individual cell-types involved and see how the microcircuitries in each structure works. At the completion of this discovery phase will should understand how you go from sensory input to motor output and how information is encoded and transformed at each synapse along the way.
With this information we will be able to make computational models that will help us predict the performance of these circuits and will lead us to new hypotheses about how their work that can be tested by further experiments.
I was excited to see how the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre is perfectly placed to contribute to this marriage between experimental and computational neural circuit approaches. A future phase will focus on plasticity and how the circuits can be adapted, and exploring how the process can be targeted by drugs, such as small molecules that can selectively block regions or cell types or modulate their computational capacity to mitigate behaviours.
We are still a long way away from translating this work to humans, but there is great potential in targeting the instinctive behavioural system to treat psychiatric disorders because the suffering associated with these illnesses is overwhelmingly caused by pathological excess or insufficiency in these behaviors.
For one, if you look at the human literature nobody talks about the hypothalamus and behaviour. Also, much of the anatomical work in the instinctive fear system, for example, has been overlooked because it was carried out by Brazilian neuroscientists who were not particularly bothered to publish in high profile journals.
Fortunately, there has recently been a renewed interest in these behaviors and these studies are being newly appreciated. Yes, we observe that animals dramatically adapt their instinctive responses depending on their environment. For example, animals can become more avoidant of other animals, a form of social fear, if they are bullied by other animals and this avoidance can last for weeks even if the animal is not further bullied.
We have some ideas of how this plasticity works. Cortical structures that record past experiences are able to reach into the brain regions that control the production of instinctive fear behaviour and suppress them. And we have found that these circuits are conserved in primates, so it is very likely that humans use them as well to suppress avoidance behavior. We also know that the capacity to control instinctive behaviours increases around adolescence when humans begin to interact with peers and presumably need to regulate their instincts so as to balance their immediate needs with those of the group.
If you talk to psychiatrists about the things that bother their patients most, they often say it is the negative symptoms such as aggression, fear, and lack of pleasure. A drug that selectively ramped down aggression, for example, even if it did not improve cognitive symptoms, could be very useful in autism or schizophrenia.
It would depend on where you intervene between the sensory input and motor output. For example, humans could have access to very early sensory information with emotional content, and blocking this could be much more complex than in mice and rats.
We use the full range of neural circuit and molecular manipulation and monitoring tools adapted to behaving mice. Walking and talking are also included by many writers.
Whether they shall be counted in or not is, as we have already observed, simply a question of classification. We may call them either chained reflexes or instincts, according to the criterion which we adopt for our divisions. James has added cleanliness to his list, and there are some facts which point to the correctness of this view, both in its application to men and to animals. But it is at best a very imperfect and erratic trait, as any mother of normal children can testify, and we may omit it in consideration of the necessary brevity of our discussion.
We shall similarly forego any description of sympathy and modesty. A perusal of our list brings at once to notice the union of instinct and emotion. A part of the terms apply primarily to acts, and so connect themselves with the common implication of the term instinct; whereas the other part suggests much more immediately the conscious feelings characteristic of the several forms of emotional experience.
Imitation, play, and constructiveness are examples of the first kind of term; fear, anger, and jealousy illustrate the second. A few comments upon each of the instincts mentioned may serve to emphasise helpfully the typical conditions under which they. It only remains to notice that in little children, despite some irregularity in different individuals, the normal provocatives are represented by strange objects, frequently by fur, by strange places, and especially by strange people, by being left alone, by darkness, and even occasionally by black objects; and by noises, particularly if very loud and unfamiliar.
In later life, in addition to the fear which arises from the presence of actually dangerous situations, such as the menace of a great conflagration, many persons are seized with dizziness and a more or less acute terror upon finding themselves on a very high place, even though the possibility of falling over is efficiently precluded by railings, etc.
Others are frightened by anything which verges upon the supernatural. Even the cold-blooded materialist of polite fiction feels his unsentimental blood curdle just a bit at the rehearsal of a thrilling ghost story, and only the possessor of practiced nerves can be alone on a dark night in a cemetery, or a thick wood, without some " creepiness " of the hair and skin.
All of us are likely to find that in the midst of a violent tempest, whether on land or sea, the howling of the wind is a distinct source of mental anxiety quite disproportionate to our sober, intellectual apprehension of its real danger.
All these things take hold of our racial instincts, and however vigorously our individual experience attempts through its cortical machinery to put a veto on such nonsense, our lower brain centres refuse to abandon their world-old habits, and accordingly we find that our hearts are beating wildly, our breathing coming in gulps, our limbs trembling, the while we look on, mortified at the weakness we cannot control.
We are irritated by the tireless piano next door, exasperated by the teasing child, hurt and vexed by the social snub, angry at the open insult, and perhaps moved to enduring hatred by the obnoxious and unscrupulous enemy.
There is a common emotional vein running through all these conditions however much the particular momentary expression may vary. Possibly resentment is the best name wherewith to label this common factor. The instinctive nature of the motor reactions requires no further demonstration than is furnished by the sight of any little child enjoying a tantrum.
The explicitly pugnacious element is, under civilised surroundings, inconspicuous after childhood is passed, despite the tremendous virility it displays if the curb be once slackened. The evolution of the race has been notoriously sanguinary, and we should feel no surprise, however much of disgust and regret we may entertain, that under the excitement of actual combat the old brute should display the cloven hoof.
The development of so-called civilised codes of war affords interesting instances of the effort rational man makes to clothe with decency the shame of his own brutishness. According to the code, women and children may not be slaughtered, but it is occasionally lawful to despoil them of their flocks and herds, to lay waste their grain, and even to burn the roofs above their heads. Shyness and Sociability. Sociability is simply an expression of the essentially gregarious nature of man.
Some men seem destined for membership in a very small herd,-- two or three at most,-others find their most natural surroundings amid large numbers. But the man or child who in one form or another does not natively crave. Many turn from life and such companions as they chance to have attracted with horror and disgust, seeking in God or in some ideal of their own imagination a companionship which shall be fit and satisfying.
But what is such a turning other than the most pathetic ap. No, sociability, under whatever limitations, is an expression of the very essence of humanity, and every little child evinces it by shunning solitude. What often passes with children for a love of solitude is really more truly referable to the operation of the contrary instinct of shyness.
In the very nature of the case the two impulses must always have been in unstable equilibrium so long as the drama of human life has been upon the boards. A certain measure of suspicion toward the action and purposes of others must always have been a condition of avoiding harm and imposition.
On the other hand, the race is fundamentally gregarious, and all its greatest achievements have come about through cooperative undertakings in which the solidarity of the social structure has been a sine qua non.
The tension between these two instincts, which we often find existing in ourselves, is no mere idiosyncrasy of our own purely personal organisation. It is rather a replica in us of a conflict which has been a part of the experience of every sane human being that ever lived.
Sociability finds everywhere its natural expression in smiling and in bodily attitudes, or gestures, which are, perhaps, best described as obviously non-pugnacious. The secondary gestures, apart from smiling and laughing, are through imitation early overlaid with the conventional ceremonials of different races and peoples. But in babies we find general extensor movements of reaching and stretching out of the arms, with eyes wide open and gaze fixed, head erect, and often nodding.
In shyness the precise reverse is encountered. Strangers and persons feared or venerated are the normal stimulants to shyness. In both kinds of reaction the movements are observed before there can be any question of conscious imitation.
They are accordingly of undoubtedly instinctive nature. The great difficulty many persons experience in inhibiting the expressions of shyness also points to a similar conclusion. A special form of the generic tendency to sociability is found in childish affection for parent or nurse, and in the tender feelings in general which we cherish toward those of whom we are fond.
It finds its overt manifestation in facial expression, in modulation of voice, and in caressing gestures in general. The instinct is speedily veiled by experiential influences, but it gives every internal evidence of resting upon a native impulse, and its motor indices apparently require no artificial training.
In childhood its common stimulus is found in persons upon whom we are dependent for our daily care. It may even extend in a somewhat imperious fashion to toys and other possessions intimately associated with childish cosmology. In mature life its stimulus is extremely complex, and baffles brevity of description. In general, it extends to all persons and possessions that we cherish as in some sort a part of ourselves.
Curiosity and Secretiveness. Animals afford us abundant instances of curiosity, and many methods of hunting are designed to take advantage of this tendency. Taken broadly, curiosity is simply another name for interest.
In its simplest and most immediate form it is represented in the vertiginous. The child must pry about until he has fathomed the depths of your preoccupation. If asked why he wishes to know what you are about, he could give you no rational answer, even if he would. He simply knows that he must find out what you are doing. That is his feeling , and to ask for any deeper reason is itself unreasonable.
The staid business man who allows himself to be lured across the street of a summer evening by the flaring torch of the street fakir has no reputable account to offer of his procedure. Time out of mind he has yielded to the same fascinating bait, always to find the same old bogus gold watches, the same improbable jewelry, the same nauseous medicines, passing out into the capacious maw of the great gullible public.
Curiosity is the racial instinct to which our sedate citizen is yielding, and that is all there is to the matter. In this simple form the motor expression is found in the alert and wide-open eyes, the parted lips, the attentive ear, the general attitude of readiness to react to any lead. In its more intellectual phases we shall consider it under the head-of interest in a later chapter.
Secretiveness will by many readers be thought unwarrantedly introduced as an instinct. It is not usually of sufficient consequence to justify any extended defence of its instinctive nature. But as a special form of shyness, at least, it deserves a word. It seems to be a development of those instincts among animals which lead them to render themselves as inconspicuous as possible. Certain insects and birds frequent haunts in which the surroundings, whether vegetation or earth, are of a colour similar to their own.
Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. What is it that motivates behavior? Is the way that we behave something we are born with, or is it something that develops as we age and due to the experiences we have?
What evidence supports the basis of motivation? According to the instinct theory of motivation , all organisms are born with innate biological tendencies that help them survive.
This theory suggests that instincts drive all behaviors. So, what exactly is instinct? Instincts are goal-directed and innate patterns of behavior that are not the result of learning or experience. Both of these behaviors occur naturally and automatically. They do not need to be learned in order to be displayed. In animals, instincts are inherent tendencies to engage spontaneously in a particular pattern of behavior.
Examples of this include a dog shaking after it gets wet, a sea turtle seeking out the ocean after hatching, or a bird migrating before the winter season.
Ethologist Konrad Lorenz famously demonstrated the power of instincts when he was able to get young geese to imprint on him. He noted that geese would become attached to the first moving thing they encountered after they hatched, which in most cases would be their mothers. However, by ensuring that he was the first thing the geese encountered, they instead became attached or imprinted, on him. In humans, many reflexes are examples of instinctive behaviors. The rooting reflex, as mentioned earlier is one such example, as is the suckling reflex a reflex in which babies begin sucking when a finger or nipple places pressure on the roof of their mouth.
The Moro reflex is a startle reaction seen in babies less than 6 months of age, and the Babkin reflex is when babies open their mouths and flex their arms in response to rubbing the palms of their hands.
For example, brushing an infant's cheek will cause the child to turn their head and search for a nipple. Psychologist William McDougall was one of the first to write about the instinct theory of motivation. He suggested that instinctive behavior was composed of three essential elements: perception, behavior, and emotion.
He also outlined 18 different instincts that included curiosity, maternal instinct, laughter, comfort, sex, and food-seeking. Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud used a broad view of motivation and suggested the human behavior was driven by two key forces: the life and death instincts. These included such things as fear, anger, love, shame, and cleanliness. The instinct theory suggests that motivation is primarily biologically based. We engage in certain behaviors because they aid in survival.
Migrating before winter ensures the survival of the flock, so the behavior has become instinctive. Birds who migrated were more likely to survive and therefore more likely to pass down their genes to future generations.
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