TOW #20 - A General Theory of Love, pt. 1 - IRB

I found the first half of the book to be really interesting. It explained the different parts of the brain and how they developed during evolution to serve their specific function - the reptilian brain is basic functioning like breathing and heartbeat, the limbic brain is emotional and social, and the neocortex (the most recently developed part of the brain) is primarily for logic, reasoning, and communication. After this, the authors described the need for social interaction and the effects isolation can have on an animal, and how animals interact with each other, primarily social animals like humans and the way they can communicate through facial expressions because humans have the ability to tell emotions from other people and have universal displays of emotion, like happy smiles or angry expressions. I found it was interesting to approach emotions from a scientific and biological standpoint, and the parts of the brain that influence emotion and interactions. The authors also investigated what happens when these mechanisms go wrong, like with Aspergers syndrome or anxiety disorders. The authors used a lot of examples in the book, with different studies that have been done about the brain and how they demonstrate the authors' arguments (like the example of the monkeys who didn't have care from their parents or the twins who were raised apart) and individual people who demonstrate their points, like the man with no explicit memory as well as hypothetical examples like the boy with Aspergers. The book explored the different parts of the brain and how they relate to human emotion, and so far, primarily love between parents and children and how that can be affected by altering the chemistry of the brain. It not only explained how the brain functions with emotion and social connections, but also what happens if these mechanisms are not functioning properly and the way people can be fundamentally changed if this happens. Primarily, the first part of the book was concerned with describing the functioning of the brain and how evolution has created the ability for humans to experience the complex emotions that they do.