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

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

The frontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until age 25, which is wild!

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.

The most important point of [Susan] Fiske's work is that it provides a taxonomy for our differing feelings about different Thems - sometimes fear, sometimes ridicule, sometimes contemptuous pity, sometimes savagery.

It's great to have a buff frontal cortex to do that harder thing - for example, help a person in need rather buy some useless, shiny gee-gaw.

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