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Human aggression - introduction
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Evolution of aggression - introduction
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Brain mechanisms of aggression - introduction
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Dynamics of aggression - introduction Pages 21 - 22 - 23
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Over longer periods of time the very internal structure of the motivational system itself changes due to the processes of learning and hormonal effects. In this way the organism adjusts its behavior to fit with changing social and ecological environments. Since we know something of the neural structure of motivational systems, it is now possible to hypothesize where in the structure the various learning and hormonal effects take place.
As analyzed in the paper, Inborn and Acquired Aspects of Offense and Defense.., there are at least seven different points in the motivational systems structures of offense and defense where learning effects take place. Interestingly enough, only two of these points seem to involve the kinds of learning that have been investigated traditionally in the laboratory, classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Other types of learning are involved here that have received only scant attention in laboratory research: familiarity and unfamiliarity of stimuli from conspecifics; "wildness" in response to sudden noise or movement; taming in response to tactile stimulation; and neophobia due to environmental changes.
One type of learning is touched upon in this paper and deserves far more investigation than it has received. In researching the sensory modes involved in releasing stimuli, John Kanki and I found that visual releasing stimuli for the upright posture are learned in the course of development, and that the neural mechanism for the learning of a visual stimulus requires alterations in the basic thalamo-cortical system of the vibrissal sensitivity over which it is superimposed (Kanki and Adams, 1978). More work on this type of experimental paradigm might help unlock the great role that thalamo-cortical systems play in higher learning processes.
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