The frontal cortex is an incredibly interesting part of the brain - ours is proportionately bigger and/or more complex than in any other species.

Most of us don't collapse into puddles of stress-related disease.

Naturally, things are more complicated - those groovy, pro-social effects of oxytocin apply to how we interact with in-group members.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.

But often, it's easier to resist temptation with distraction, or to be so inculcated in doing the right thing that it's automatic, outside the frontal cortex's portfolio - Then it isn't the harder thing, it's the only thing you can do.

Pulling a gun's trigger can be an appalling act. But if it is suicidal drawing fire to save someone, it has an utterly different meaning. Placing your hand on someone's arm can be an act of deep compassion or the first step of betrayal. The punch line? It's all about context, and the biology of context is vastly more complicated than the biology of the behavior itself.

I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.