Quirk: Brain Science Makes Sense of Your Peculiar Personality - Hardcover

Holmes, Hannah

 
9781400068401: Quirk: Brain Science Makes Sense of Your Peculiar Personality
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1400068401 ISBN 13: 9781400068401
Verlag: Random House, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Who are you? It’s the most fundamental of human questions. Are you the type of person who tilts at windmills, or the one who prefers to view them from the comfort of an air-conditioned motorcoach? Our personalities are endlessly fascinating—not just to ourselves but also to our spouses, our parents, our children, our co-workers, our neighbors. As a highly social species, humans have to navigate among an astonishing variety of personalities. But how did all these different permutations come about? And what purpose do they serve?

With her trademark wit and sly humor, Hannah Holmes takes readers into the amazing world of personality and modern brain science. Using the Five Factor Model, which slices temperaments into the major factors (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness) and minor facets (such as impulsive, artistic, or cautious), Holmes demonstrates how our genes and brains dictate which factors and facets each of us displays. Are you a Nervous Nelly? Your amygdala is probably calling the shots. Hyperactive Hal? It’s all about the dopamine.

Each facet took root deep in the evolution of life on Earth, with Nature allowing enough personal variation to see a species through good times and bad. Just as there are introverted and extroverted people, there are introverted and extroverted mice, and even starfish. In fact, the personality genes we share with mice make them invaluable models for the study of disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Thus it is deep and ancient biases that guide your dealings with a very modern world. Your personality helps to determine the political party you support, the car you drive, the way you eat M&Ms, and the likelihood that you’ll cheat on your spouse.

Drawing on data from top research laboratories, the lives of her eccentric friends, the conflicts that plague her own household, and even the habits of her two pet mice, Hannah Holmes summarizes the factors that shape you. And what she proves is that it does take all kinds. Even the most irksome and trying personality you’ve ever encountered contributes to the diversity of our species. And diversity is the key to our survival.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hannah Holmes is the author of The Well-Dressed Ape, Suburban Safari, and The Secret Life of Dust. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Discover, Outside, and many other publications. She was a frequent contributor on science and nature subjects for the Discovery Channel Online. She lives in Portland, Maine.

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1

FACTOR:

NEUROTICISM

Neuroticism Facets

Anxiety

Depression

The Cast

Mascot 5HTT KO;

also introducing Mitzi and Maxi



Neurotransmitter Serotonin



Brain Regions Amygdala, Prefrontal Cortex





Neuroticism Facet:

anxiety

ANXIETY indicators Rarely Sometimes Often

I'm easily startled o o o

I'm a worrier o o o

I keep my opinions to myself o o o



NEUROTICISM

Are you that partygoer who neglects the stuffed mushrooms because you're a little freaked out by that guy scowling alone on the sofa? Or perhaps you avoid the mushrooms because you're worried that other people will see you pigging out. Perhaps you just aren't hungry, the party is a disappointment, and you wish you were at home in bed. Maybe you're the partygoer who does eat the stuffed mushrooms, about half of them, because once you start you just can't stop. If any of these sound like you, congratulations! You could have a Neurotic personality!

Neuroticism is about avoidance. Neuroticism is about anticipating the worst and retreating. It's about being the first person to come in out of the rain, and the last to believe the storm has passed. A Neurotic brain is attracted to angry faces, to shouts of alarm, to catastrophic headlines. It commits life's harshest lessons to memory and does not forget them.

For a strongly Neurotic person life is not a bowl of cherries. A Neurotic brain is more upset by stressful events than a less Neurotic brain would be. A person with a Neurotic personality is inclined to be moody and emotional, at best. At worst Neurotic people have a higher chance of sliding into a full-blown anxiety disorder or depression. Neuroticism is a bit of a burden.

But somebody has to be the doubter. We can't all just laugh and play the days away. Someone has to look gift horses in the mouth. Someone has to interrogate the charming stranger before we throw open the gates. Someone has to look past the sunbeams and notice the gathering thunderheads. People with Neurotic brains are our watchdogs. They notice signs of trouble first, they remember every disaster that ever happened, and they're always on guard against new ones.

Serotonin is the signature brain chemical of Neuroticism. This chemical helps information move through our (and every animal's) nervous system. If you have the normal amount of serotonin lubricating your brain, you've got a shot at serenity. But if your serotonin is either too low or too high, Neuroticism may cast its shadow over your picnic.

The amygdala is the mascot brain region of the Neurotic personality. Named after an almond, and tucked deep between your ears, it's an ancient emergency control center. This little nut has the power to dismiss your fancy intellect when circumstances call for action instead of analysis. When the amygdala detects an emergency it prepares you to run, fight, scream, or overturn a vehicle in order to protect life and limb. In a person with a Neurotic personality the amygdala is set on "supersensitive." It's jumpy. It's trigger-happy. It's an emergency center that would rather issue a false alarm than be caught off guard. In fact, the more stress you throw at a Neurotic amygdala, the more watchful it becomes.

But Neuroticism does more than keep us all safe from lightning and spiders and mayonnaise left out overnight. A recent study found that anxious children are less likely to die in stupid accidents-the "Hey, watch this" accidents that claim carefree kids who ride skateboards down stairs or play with loaded guns. The Neurotic personality also appears to convey a certain blessing of intelligence, particularly the planning variety that helps a person to avoid surprises.

The anxiety and depression facets of Neuroticism are heavyweights in human happiness. If you score relatively high for those, that doesn't mean you're destined for the psychiatric ward. But a personality that's high in anxiety or depression does have an elevated risk of developing mental illness. These personalities are poised to skid right off the Neuroticism personality scale and plunge into the pit of psychiatric disorders. Anxiety disorders and serious depression are painful conditions. So science hunts for a cure. And in the process, science reveals a lot about personality, both disordered and normal.

This gives you a quick look at where you land on this facet. If your answers tend toward the "often" side, you're higher in that facet.

Anxiety is the quintessential "avoid" emotion. When it rises up, it's instructing you to step away from the edge of the cliff, back away from the spider, run away from the man with the axe. Everyone's brain monitors her environment for danger. Some brains shrug off most of the omens and portents as meaningless, and others duck and cover for every passing sparrow.

Anxious Mouse

The father of serotonin, Klaus-Peter Lesch, resides in Germany. On a bleak November day I travel to Bavaria to make his acquaintance. And to meet the mouse version of myself that he has created. My train rushes into a hilly eastern quadrant of Germany I've never seen before. The leaves have fallen, but ivy and other creeping things keep the woods green, and under spitting clouds the farmland looks mossy. Then we wend into a river valley with steep golden hills on either side, and I've arrived in Würzburg, home to the anxious mouse.

Wait, steep golden hills? What is that gold stuff? Grapevines? Seriously? Just my luck! Normally I am a traveler whose road stories detour into descriptions of the ceviche, or the curry, or the smoldering chestnut liqueur. Approaching Germany I steeled myself for the würsts of many colors, but I neglected to review the beverage category beyond a quick nose-wrinkle regarding beer. Now here I stood in the cloying, the unbearably sweet, heart of Riesling country. Riesling is the wine I love to hate. This far north, a grape's growth is retarded by the low temperature, allowing sugar and acid to accumulate under its skin. If the wine's fermentation ceases before that sugar is converted to booze, then achtung, baby! Sticky wine warning! Oh, well. This is work, not play.

In the morning I walk across town to find Lesch, who works in a building complex among the vineyards. "Nervenkliniken," the sign on the guardhouse reads. This I find charming. Technically, it means "neural clinics." But it reminds me of the olden-days term for people like me: I'm "nervous." I've got "weak nerves." I must "take the cure at a Nervenklinik." It occurs to me that the standard olden-days medicine for a case of nerves-alcohol-was squeezed from the grapes now being displaced by the Nervenkliniken. Times change, cures change.

My goodness, it is a nice Nervenklinik. It's airy, and tropical plants crowd every window. And let me just say two things for the record, two things that may be applied to every German academic office I enter in the course of this book. First, they're so nice. The paint is fresh, the carpeting-carpeting!-stands proud, the furniture is neither rusty nor peeling. Second, they're tidy. I've been studying scientists for twenty years, and I've never seen so many bare desks! A more typical academic habitat contains so many research papers and journals and books that the floor (scuffed linoleum, usually) is visible only in little trails the resident treads between the piles. Here in Germany an office will have a wall of closed bookcases and file drawers, leaving the entire floor and desk surfaces exposed! I swear I'm not falling for the cliché regarding German orderliness. It is a truly striking difference in the culture of academic shelter.

The tenant of the proverbial corner office is a towering specimen with graying hair a few millimeters longer than a crew cut, and a wide,...

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Verlag
Random House
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1400068401
ISBN 13 
9781400068401
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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