The Compassionate Brain

Our success as a species and resultant challenges we face are products of our evolution as a social creature. Compassion is a key element of our cooperative success past and future, but vulnerable to interactive context. How does the mushy glob of cells in our skull produce such a thing as compassion, including both motivation for and joyous rewards from exercising it? This course will dig into how the physiology and chemistry of nerve cells and networks can generate compassion, and how that process might be thwarted or optimized by context.

Readings: “How the Brain Works,” Essential Knowledge in 30 minutes, Emma Hartley and “Anxiety: The Science,” Essential Knowledge in 30 minutes, Emma Hartley, Copyright: Up to Speed, Sneks AG, Switzerland, both are only available on Kindle. Also encouraged: Dacher Kellner, Born to be Good, The Science of a Meaningful Life, ISBN 978-0393337136.

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David McCobb is a retired professor of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University. He received his PHD in Biology, and spent 22 years at Cornell NB&B, where his expertise ranged from cellular neurophysiology to behavioral ecology, including psychology. His research extended from snail brain function to motoneuron development, molecular genetics of ion channels, and in his lab, a focus on a key channel controlling stress reactivity in mammals.