Why Your Brain Equates Attention with Survival
Exclusion makes you unhappy, but inclusion does not necessarily make you happy. Once you’re in a group, you see others getting what you are not getting. You feel bad, though you hate to admit it. There’s a good physical reason for this pervasive source of unhappiness. The first experience in your brain, the circuit at the foundation of your neural network, is the sense that you will die if you don’t get attention.
It Starts Early
The fragility of a new-born human is unparalleled in nature. No other creature is born so far from being able to survive on his own.
Consider:
A gazelle can run with the herd the day after it’s born.
An elephant can walk before its first meal, since that’s how it gets to the nipple.
A fish is an orphan from birth because its parents swim off once the eggs are fertilized
Yet a human cannot even lift his head for weeks, and he can’t provide for himself and his offspring for decades. We humans are born with an unfinished nervous system for a good reason. If we developed fully in utero, our heads would be too big to fit through the birth canal. Instead, we get born premature, with a nervous system that isn’t hooked up. This was learned by comparing human infants to premature chimpanzees. A premature chimp is not capable of holding onto its mother as she swings through the trees the way a full-term baby chimp can. A new-born human is like a premature chimp with a much bigger brain. Our brains kept growing bigger as our ancestors succeeded at getting more protein and fat. They thrived on bone marrow from scavenged bones even before they excelled at hunting. Bigger brains led to better hunting methods, more nutrition, and even bigger brains.
So our species got born at ever earlier stages of development, with a lot of neurons, but fewer connections between them. A chimpanzee is born with eyes and limbs that are ready to go. Human slink up their sensory organs and musculoskeletal system after birth, from direct experience. When a new-born human sees a hand flying in front of her face, she does not know she’s attached to that hand, no less that she can control it. We are born helpless and we hook up our brains gradually during a long period of dependency. This gives us the advantage of adapting our nervous system to the environment we’re born into, but it also means we start life with an extreme sense of vulnerability.
Fortunately, the vulnerability of the human baby sparked communication. A baby that could call attention to its needs was more likely to survive. Mothers good at interpreting their babies’ signals had more surviving DNA. Thus, the ability to communicate was naturally selected for. When we succeed, our needs are met and happy chemicals flow. When we fail, cortisol flows and we look for a way to do something. Eventually, we develop complex communication circuits, but they rest on the core sense that you will die if you are not heard. You don’t think this in words, but you think it with neurochemicals. When you were born, you experienced pain that you couldn’t do anything about. The resulting cortisol made you cry. That worked! It got your needs met.
A new-born doesn’t cry as a conscious act of communication. It doesn’t cry because it knows what milk is. It cries because that’s one of our few prewired circuits. A baby soon learns to stop crying because it recognizes signs of relief from its past. It stops crying before its needs are actually met because it has linked attention to relief. But a baby learns that attention can vanish as quickly as it came. Social support disappears for reasons a baby doesn’t understand. When a baby feels safe, it ventures out to explore, and pain strikes again in some unexpected way. We must explore beyond the cocoon of social support to wire up our brains, so we experience threat and learn to manage it. No amount of nurturing can protect us from the reality of human vulnerability.
Your Early Circuits Remain with You
Today, Your early vulnerability circuits are still there. When your poetry is ignored by the one you love, or your views are ignored at a meeting, these circuits send electricity to your cortisol. We don’t consciously think it’s a matter of life and death to be seen and heard, but old circuits make it feel that way. The bad feeling of being ignored is compounded when you see others getting attention. In every troop of primates, some individuals get more attention than others. Field researchers have documented the way baboons give their attention to some troop mates more than others. Laboratory researchers find that chimpanzees will exchange food for a chance to look at photos of the alpha chimp in their group. Your brain seeks attention as if your life depended on it because in the state of nature, it does. When the expectation is disappointed, cortisol flows.
- Habits of a Happy Brain
Exclusion makes you unhappy, but inclusion does not necessarily make you happy. Once you’re in a group, you see others getting what you are not getting. You feel bad, though you hate to admit it. There’s a good physical reason for this pervasive source of unhappiness. The first experience in your brain, the circuit at the foundation of your neural network, is the sense that you will die if you don’t get attention.
It Starts Early
The fragility of a new-born human is unparalleled in nature. No other creature is born so far from being able to survive on his own.
Consider:
A gazelle can run with the herd the day after it’s born.
An elephant can walk before its first meal, since that’s how it gets to the nipple.
A fish is an orphan from birth because its parents swim off once the eggs are fertilized
Yet a human cannot even lift his head for weeks, and he can’t provide for himself and his offspring for decades. We humans are born with an unfinished nervous system for a good reason. If we developed fully in utero, our heads would be too big to fit through the birth canal. Instead, we get born premature, with a nervous system that isn’t hooked up. This was learned by comparing human infants to premature chimpanzees. A premature chimp is not capable of holding onto its mother as she swings through the trees the way a full-term baby chimp can. A new-born human is like a premature chimp with a much bigger brain. Our brains kept growing bigger as our ancestors succeeded at getting more protein and fat. They thrived on bone marrow from scavenged bones even before they excelled at hunting. Bigger brains led to better hunting methods, more nutrition, and even bigger brains.
So our species got born at ever earlier stages of development, with a lot of neurons, but fewer connections between them. A chimpanzee is born with eyes and limbs that are ready to go. Human slink up their sensory organs and musculoskeletal system after birth, from direct experience. When a new-born human sees a hand flying in front of her face, she does not know she’s attached to that hand, no less that she can control it. We are born helpless and we hook up our brains gradually during a long period of dependency. This gives us the advantage of adapting our nervous system to the environment we’re born into, but it also means we start life with an extreme sense of vulnerability.
Fortunately, the vulnerability of the human baby sparked communication. A baby that could call attention to its needs was more likely to survive. Mothers good at interpreting their babies’ signals had more surviving DNA. Thus, the ability to communicate was naturally selected for. When we succeed, our needs are met and happy chemicals flow. When we fail, cortisol flows and we look for a way to do something. Eventually, we develop complex communication circuits, but they rest on the core sense that you will die if you are not heard. You don’t think this in words, but you think it with neurochemicals. When you were born, you experienced pain that you couldn’t do anything about. The resulting cortisol made you cry. That worked! It got your needs met.
A new-born doesn’t cry as a conscious act of communication. It doesn’t cry because it knows what milk is. It cries because that’s one of our few prewired circuits. A baby soon learns to stop crying because it recognizes signs of relief from its past. It stops crying before its needs are actually met because it has linked attention to relief. But a baby learns that attention can vanish as quickly as it came. Social support disappears for reasons a baby doesn’t understand. When a baby feels safe, it ventures out to explore, and pain strikes again in some unexpected way. We must explore beyond the cocoon of social support to wire up our brains, so we experience threat and learn to manage it. No amount of nurturing can protect us from the reality of human vulnerability.
Your Early Circuits Remain with You
Today, Your early vulnerability circuits are still there. When your poetry is ignored by the one you love, or your views are ignored at a meeting, these circuits send electricity to your cortisol. We don’t consciously think it’s a matter of life and death to be seen and heard, but old circuits make it feel that way. The bad feeling of being ignored is compounded when you see others getting attention. In every troop of primates, some individuals get more attention than others. Field researchers have documented the way baboons give their attention to some troop mates more than others. Laboratory researchers find that chimpanzees will exchange food for a chance to look at photos of the alpha chimp in their group. Your brain seeks attention as if your life depended on it because in the state of nature, it does. When the expectation is disappointed, cortisol flows.
- Habits of a Happy Brain
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