A recent explosion of neuroscience techniques is driving substantial advances in our understanding of the brain. Combined with developments in engineering, machine learning and computing this flowering has helped us enhance our cognitive abilities and potential. In fact, new research into the extraordinary machine in our skulls is helping us keep pace with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
Exciting new advances are everywhere, but worth putting front and centre are findings made in the relatively new area of social neuroscience. Research by Molly Crockett at Oxford University has demonstrated how we might influence the social brain and examine the effects of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, and hormones, such as oxytocin, on social cognition and social interactions. This includes the most fundamental aspects of our daily lives: trust, punishment, moral judgement, conformity and empathy.
Crockett and colleagues used experiments looking at cooperation, and moral dilemmas such as the “trolley problem” where participants must decide who to save from an onrushing railway cart (a similar puzzle was posed in the 2015 Helen Mirren film Eye in the Sky). Among their findings was evidence that serotonin increased an aversion to harming others. This clearly suggests that this brain chemical can promote positive social behaviour.
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Image:Brains
Credit: Neil Conway
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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