As I picked up picked up my AP Psychology required reading, Monkeyluv by Robert Sapolsky, I wondered what on earth animal behavior could have to do with human psychology. The idea that we could draw connections between the conduct of mice and humans escaped me; I had forgotten that humans were, in fact, animals. Sapolsky does his best to drive this point home as he humorously, yet intellectually, illustrates the idea that humans and animals are often more similar than we’d like to admit, and how by studying their behavior, we might better understand our own. Just who exactly is this man to be shattering my worldview? Before giving Sapolsky’s assertions any kind of merit, I had to know of his credentials. As it turns out, Sapolsky has spent decades in the field of animals, literately and figuratively. Not only has he received his B.A. in biological anthropology from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from Rockefeller University, Sapolsky has traveled to Africa on numerous occasions simply to observe the wildlife there, particularly the baboons. Currently, he serves as a professor at Stanford University, with strong ties to the biological and neurological departments there. We could simply solve the mystery of his authority on the subject here, because if Harvard thought him reliable enough to hand over a diploma, then certainly the layperson could trust in his ideas. Yet Sapolsky lends himself even greater credibility as he cites the readings from which he synthesized his claims, so that us laypeople could evaluate his sources for ourselves. And these citations are not only at the end of the book like a bibliography that we could easily skip over, but they are incorporated into the end of every single chapter. A few examples include various scientific studies, articles from the New York Times, and the Journal of Theoretical Biology. These are all respectable, credible sources that can easily be found and investigated. I myself looked into Roy Meadow’s original paper formally naming MPB. Moral of the story (as Sapolsky might say): Robert knows what he’s talking about. Monkeyluv is organized into 18 essays, further divided into three distinct sections, the first of which entitled “Genes and Who We Are”. Here, Sapolsky stresses the significance of nature and nurture in human development, rather than the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture. Simply put, Sapolsky explains both sides of the coin are equally important, an idea that scientists sometimes forget. One overarching example from the book is that genes do not cause things such as anxiety and depression in animals; rather, they can make an organism more sensitive to these conditions. This implies that two factors, a genetic predisposition and the environment, may lead to psychological problems when in conjunction with each other. Not to say that genes don’t play a critical role in the lives of organisms, Sapolsky also takes a look at “The Genetic War Between Men and Women”, in which he describes how evolution drives all members of the opposite sex against each other in terms of reproduction. Here, he names specific genes and how they affect the sexes, such as the paternally imprinted genes for the growth of the placenta and the maternal genes that attempt to keep this growth in check. The second grouping is called “Our Bodies and …show more content…
These six essays describe the interaction between the brain and body, and how the author views both as equally influential to our behavior. Sapolsky draws attention to different parts of the brain, such as the prefrontal and frontal cortexes and how they influence everyday activities like dreaming or discipline and delaying gratification in order to complete summer work. Then, Sapolsky changes gears and looks at outside influences of the body that can affect the chemistry of the brain. Specifically, he looks to the effect of stress on the brain, which may cause the hippocampus to shrink in those with PTSD, and the ability of the body’s autonomic nervous system to get the brain to think a certain way, such as the raising of blood pressure when we’re angry, almost like a positive feedback mechanism. Finally, the author tells of how the influence of others can distort our own brains through an essay on Munchausen’s by Proxy and tales of parasites controlling our