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hit, remény, szeretet

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hit, remény, szeretet

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The survival value of things like fear, disgust and joy is obvious: run away from it; don't eat it; do more of it. But the idea that emotions shape all activity in adaptive ways is quite a subtle one. Rationality has its place. In the end, though, as fans of “Star Trek” will remember, it is Captain Kirk, the emotion-ridden human, not Mr Spock, the emotionless Vulcan, who has the nous to run the spaceship.

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The survival value of things like fear, disgust and joy is obvious: run away from it; don't eat it; do more of it. But the idea that emotions shape all activity in adaptive ways is quite a subtle one. Rationality has its place. In the end, though, as fans of “Star Trek” will remember, it is Captain Kirk, the emotion-ridden human, not Mr Spock, the emotionless Vulcan, who has the nous to run the spaceship.

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The survival value of things like fear, disgust and joy is obvious: run away from it; don't eat it; do more of it. But the idea that emotions shape all activity in adaptive ways is quite a subtle one. Rationality has its place. In the end, though, as fans of “Star Trek” will remember, it is Captain Kirk, the emotion-ridden human, not Mr Spock, the emotionless Vulcan, who has the nous to run the spaceship.

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Dr Damasio, who now works at the University of Southern California, is both a clinician and a researcher. He draws a parallel between Gage's case and those of some of his own patients. In particular, he has a patient called Elliot (in neuroscience, patients are often referred to by single names or initials to preserve their privacy) whose frontal lobe was damaged by a brain tumour. When the tumour was removed by surgeons, the damaged tissue was taken out too.

Like Gage, Elliot was a responsible individual with a good job (and in his case a family, too) before he suffered his brain damage. The outcome was somewhat different in that Elliot did not become a foul-mouthed wastrel; rather, he became obsessed with detail and stopped being able to make sensible decisions. The overall result was similar, though. He lost his job and his wife and ended up an outcast.

At first, Dr Damasio thought that Elliot's tumour had damaged his reason (both lesion studies and fMRI have shown that the frontal cortex is also the seat of the brain's reasoning powers). Tests, however, showed that what had gone instead were his emotions. Elliot no longer felt anything, and although he could summarise the choices available in a given situation as well as anyone else, without his emotions to guide him he could not actually make a choice. And, as probably happened with Gage, that loss of emotion also changed his self.

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The perfect memory is of everything and nothing

EVER since the unfortunate case of H.M., the subject of a lesion study second in fame only to that of Phineas Gage, neuroscientists have known that what the amygdala is to emotion, the hippocampus is to memory: if it is not the whole orchestra, then it is certainly the conductor.

H.M. lost the ability to form new memories when both of his hippocampuses were destroyed by radical surgery in the 1950s, and though he is now an old man, he still thinks of himself as the twenty-something who went into the operating theatre. He is palpably shocked whenever he sees himself in a mirror.

Memory is central to the question “who am I?” It is where the research is at its most nitty-gritty, with studies of the biochemistry of synapses and the action of individual genes, but also at its most esoteric, looking seriously at the function of dreams. It is, too, where cognitive neuroscience meets the videogames industry.

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Soul-searching

The limbic system is itself divided. Some of the main parts are the hippocampus, the amygdala, the thalamus and the hypothalamus. The largest of the basal ganglia is the caudate. The pineal gland, which lies behind the limbic system, is the only brain structure that does not come in pairs. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes thought it was the seat of the human soul.

Descartes, however, was wrong. It is in fact the cerebrum's outer layer, the cerebral cortex, that is man's true distinguishing feature. The cerebral cortex forms 80% of the mass of a human brain, compared with 30% of a rat's. It is divided into lobes, four on each side. The rearmost one, called the occipital, handles vision. Then come the parietal and temporal lobes, which deal with the other senses and with movement. At the front, as you would expect, is the frontal lobe.

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One way of classifying nerve cells is by the neurotransmitters they employ. Workaday nerve cells use molecules called glutamic acid and gamma aminobutyric acid. More specialised cells use dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and a variety of other molecules. Dopamine cells, for example, are involved in the brain's reward systems, generating feelings of pleasure.

Many brain drugs, both therapeutic and recreational, work either by mimicking neurotransmitters or altering their activity.
Heroin mimics a group of molecules called endogenous opioids.
Nicotine mimics acetylcholine.
Prozac promotes the activity of serotonin.
And cocaine boosts the effect of dopamine, which is one reason why it is so addictive.

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Lehet, hogy elfelejtik, mit mondtál nekik, de soha nem fogják elfelejteni, hogy hogyan érezték magukat szavaidtól. - Carl W. Buehner

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Genetics is starting to contribute to the study of emotion as well. The breakthrough came in 1993, with the discovery of a family (in the Netherlands, as it happened) that included an abnormally large number of violent criminals. The common factor in the criminal members of the family turned out to be the absence, due to a faulty gene, of an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A. This enzyme regulates a group of neurotransmitters that includes serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin- and dopamine-based neurons are both important for emotional responses.

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