Essentials: The Biology of Aggression, Mating & Arousal | Dr. David Anderson

This is a Huberman Lab Essentials episode featuring Dr. David Anderson, PhD, a Professor of Biology at Caltech and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who is a world expert in sexual behavior, violent aggression, fear, and other motivated states. The episode covers the brain circuits underlying how emotions emerge and shape behaviors — including the neural control of fear, aggression, and pain — and explores how hormones and neuromodulators influence these emotional states, with a focus on why understanding these internal processes is essential for improving mental health treatments. It also examines different types of violent aggression and how they are impacted by biological sex, gender, context, prior experience, and hormones, as well as the role of peptides in social isolation-induced anxiety and aggression.

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Source: research