During the past 150-million year journey of animal evolution, the advantages of social abilities have been possibly the most important factor driving the development of the brain.
The first proto mammals lived probably about 180 million years ago, followed by the earliest birds around 150 million years ago. Mammals and birds faced the same survival challenges as reptiles and fishes did, still they had a larger brain, required to plan, communicate, cooperate and negotiate for social functions like selecting a mate, sharing food or keeping the young ones alive.
The next major step occurred with the primates appearing around 80 million years ago. Their most defining characteristic was and is advanced sociability. More complex relationships required more complex brains, and thus their cortex was bigger compared to the rest of their brain.
Then about 2.6 million years ago, our ancestors began making stone tools. Discovery of fire and cooking in the later years also played its part. If we were to fulfill the energy-requirement of our brain without the fire and cooking, then we would need to eat almost 8 hours a day. It is only because of that discovery that we can get energy (calories) required for the brain in just a few minutes and devote the rest of our day’s time in other more productive or constructive works. As a result, since then, the brain has tripled in size.
Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure that this enlargement of our brain changed everything for us. It challenged the female body to evolve in order to enable babies with bigger brains to exit the birth canal; it led to a hugely-longer dependent-period of human child (as structures and connections in the brain took years to get established), it became the basic reason for families to evolve; and it forced males to play an integral part in the upbringing of the child. In all, most of this enlargement has been used for social, emotional, linguistic and conceptual processing.
This process of neural evolution has had the all-important impact on the progression of human species. For millions of years, until the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors lived in hunter-gatherer bands, usually with fewer than 150 members. In that harsh environment, individuals who cooperated with other members of their band typically lived longer and left more offspring.
Further, bands with strong teamwork usually beat ones with weak camaraderie at getting resources, surviving, and passing on their genes. Thus, bands with greater cooperation were more successful at aggression and aggression between bands demanded cooperation within bands.
Now, even small reproductive advantages in a single generation accumulate significantly over time. Over the 1,00,000 generations since then, those genes that fostered relationship abilities and cooperative tendencies pushed their way forward in the human gene pool. We see the results today in the neural underpinnings of many essential features of human nature like generosity, concern about reputation, forgiveness, morality and religion.
The result of all this is “take good care of ‘us’; and fear, disdain or attack ‘them’”. Our brains still possess these capabilities and inclinations. They are at work in schoolyard cliques, office politics and domestic violence. On a larger scale, these tendencies manifest in the form of racism, terrorism and territorial violence. It is a part of our evolutionary legacy.
Powerful evolutionary processes have shaped our nervous system to produce the capabilities and inclinations that foster cooperative relationships. And cooperation depends on empathy – the ability to sense the inner state of another person. Humans rely on three neural systems to simulate other person’s actions, emotions and thoughts.
When it comes to actions, it is the mirror neurons that play the key role. They light up in our brain’s perceptual-motor systems both when we perform an action and when we see someone else perform that action, giving us a felt sense of what he is experiencing in his body.
When it comes to emotions, the insula and the linked limbic circuits activate when we either experience strong emotions like fear or anger or see others having those feelings. The more aware we are of our own emotional and bodily states, the more our Insula and ACC activate, and the better we are at reading others.
When it comes to thoughts, our ability to think about the inner workings of another person’s mind depends upon the prefrontal and temporal lobe structures. They are evolutionarily quite recent, start developing during the fourth year of life, and continue developing till the late teens.
These three systems – tracking the actions, emotions, and thoughts of other people – help each other. For instance, sensorimotor and limbic resonance with the actions and emotions of others gives us a lot of data for thought processing. Then, once we form an educated guess within a few seconds, we can test it out on our body and our feelings. Working together, these systems help us understand, from the inside out, what it is like to be another person.
So, cooperation requires empathy. But how to be empathic? Well! We can work with the brain’s empathy circuits through a few ways:
First, by bringing conscious intention to being empathic! This activates the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC), which orients us to the situation, focuses our intentions and warms up the limbic system to get our brain headed toward the rewards of empathy.
Second, by paying attention to the other person consistently! We can appoint a little guardian in our mind that keeps watching the continuity of our attentiveness. This will stimulate the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), which pays attention to attention. The working memory aspects of awareness are based largely on neural substrates in the dorsolateral (upper-outer) portions of PFC, in contrast to the ventromedial (lower-middle) circuitry that processes social-emotional content. By bringing attention to awareness, we are probably energizing those dorsolateral circuits more than their ventromedial neighbors.
Third, by noticing the other person’s movements, stance, gestures and actions. This activates the perceptual-motor mirroring parts of the brain. We should watch the other person’s face and eyes closely for the universal emotions. This tuning in stimulates our insula and primes it to sense the inner feelings of others.
Fourth, by actively imagining what the other person could be thinking and wanting! By considering what we know or can reasonably guess about him, in terms of his background and personal history and then by trying try to think about his motives, fears, concerns, priorities etc. Also we need to take into account what we have already experienced by tuning into his actions. This all gets prefrontal and temporal lobe structures into the act.
Fifth, by identifying and remembering what our core aim is, clearly stating what our purpose is in the relationship and what we want from the conversation; and then going for a slow start up when discussing potentially upsetting matters with another person. The last point is particularly important because rapid, abrupt actions like barging into the room or immediately criticizing trigger alarms in another person’s SNS/HPAA system and gets him into a fight-or-flight mode.
In all, it takes a lot of effort to be empathic and to cooperate.