CuriousFerret
Posts: 68
Joined: 10/16/2012
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Dumb teenager: "So what does this have to do with spiky penises again?"
Anyway, all placental mammals have a neocortex. All of them. It's not all that different from the human neocortex. Ours is just several times larger, in proportion to our bodies, than practically any found on the planet. There is almost no neocortex that holds a candle to that of human beings, with rare exceptions such as elephants. Nevertheless, every placental mammal ever born has one, and its basic workings don't vary much.
Want to know why it's daft to say that animals are limited to reinforcement learning? Because the neocortex doesn't do that. That happens mostly in the basal ganglia. To say that every placental mammal other than humans is limited to reinforcement learning is like saying that no animal other than humans has any brain structure beyond the basal ganglia, which is obvious nonsense.
The neocortex actually performs a highly specific set of functions. It is a specialized organ. Trying to use it for anything else is like trying to use your nose to perform the work of your penis or trying to drink water with your index finger. And every placental mammal in the world has one, without exception. The organ is unique to placental mammals and marsupials.
One of the many functions of the neocortex is memory storage. Your ability to carry a map around in your head is thanks to your neocortex. You store language in your neocortex. Your moral values are in your neocortex.
The prefrontal lobe of your neocortex makes it possible for you to suppress immoral or socially unacceptable behavior, and your pet cat happens to have one, significantly smaller but similar in its functions to yours. It is also necessary for voluntary behavior, which is to say, "executive functions." The prefrontal cortex is like your brain's CEO, liberal arts nerd, and chaplain, all rolled into one. To claim that non-human animals do anything else with it is like saying that cats use their ass-pucker for the purpose of hearing.
The parietal lobe is your brain's cartographer, math whiz, and general guru. Your parietal lobe likes to meditate. Chess club nerds and those goofy chicks who waste time trying to elevate themselves to a "higher astral plane" or something probably just have unusually strong connections between their parietal lobe and nucleus accumbens.
Your occipital lobe is the AV club, and it pretty much governs your ability to put together images in a way that makes it possible for other parts of your brain to use and understand them, such as assigning color labels.
Your temporal lobe is the local busybody and social gossip. It contains Wernicke's Area and Broca's Area, which are responsible for our comprehension of the meaning and syntax of language, respectively. Human social behavior happens in the temporal lobe.
And all of these structures do the same things in a rat that they do in a human being. So...why doesn't a rat stand up and talk to us? Why don't they build computers and space shuttles? It's because a rat's neocortex is significantly simpler than that of a human being. Although we are both euarchontoglires, the eurchonta branch of that clade has been a lot busier, in terms of developing their neocortex, than the glires branch of that clade. Even so, the general use of these sections of the rat's neocortex is similar.
Now, the main reason that it's dumb to attribute our B&D, D/s, and S&M bullshit to the neocortex is that these portions of the brain have nothing to do with our sexuality. If anything, it's the reverse! When you are sexually aroused, there is very little going on in your neocortex. The fact that your girlfriend acts like a kitten when she is sexed-up is no coincidence: the parts of her brain that make humans unique are running on low power at the time. If your girlfriend is acting like a kitten, then her current mental state really is not too far removed from that of your pet cat.
The fact of the matter, though, is that we like to feel this way, sometimes. BDSM is ultimately a set of structured exercises that are specifically targeted at making us feel this way. The strong emphasis on reward and punishment is designed to shut down the parts of the brain that are involved in abstract reasoning and get the brain into a more primitive mode of operation. All of the roleplay, leather gear, and kink culture are just the sophisticated set of procedures that we have put together to help us be in this state of mind more easily. This allows us to live a wonderful double-life divided between higher pursuits, such as spirituality or education, and getting good sex. It's meant to make the annoying nanny that lives in our frontal lobe shut the fuck up long enough for us to get in a good screw.
And that's why it makes sense for us to be talking about animal behavior and brain science in a discussion about kinky sex.
< Message edited by CuriousFerret -- 10/21/2012 6:52:02 AM >
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RE: BDSM in nature - Penis Spikes - 
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