Imagine you are having something nice and suddenly you see an image of something disgusting or get a bad rotten smell! More often than not, you will transfer the disgust to what you eat or see and may even lose your appetite!
That is because of a space issue involving your Insula!
Now that is not the name of a brand new Insulin for ADULTS, but an area of your brain!
The concept is pretty interesting and it involves a standard real estate problem!
In the Novel Behave and in some of his lectures Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky highlights the insular cortex (or insula) as a prime example of evolutionary improvisation.
He uses it to demonstrate how the human brain borrows primitive neural plumbing—originally designed for physical survival—to process abstract concepts like morality, tribalism, and social judgment.
This is according to the Concept of “Neural Double-Jobbing”. So in most mammals, the insular cortex serves a purely metabolic function: gustatory and sensory disgust.
It activates when an animal eats toxic, rotten food, triggering an automatic, visceral response to spit it out or throw up to save its life!
So when humans evolved the capacity for complex, abstract metaphorical thought around 50,000 years ago, the brain did not evolve a brand-new region to handle moral transgressions!
Instead, evolution repurposed the old insula to handle moral disgust.
Because the brain uses the exact same hardware for both tasks, humans cannot easily distinguish between a literal physical experience and a metaphorical one!
The areas are so close to each other that they have a cross connection!
Then you have the Visceral Side of Morality in which Sapolsky points out that when we encounter an act or symbol that is “morally disgusting,” the insula activates as if we just swallowed rancid meat!
This is why intense moral revulsion leaves us feeling physically queasy, sick to our stomachs, or with a bad taste in our mouths!
While this mechanism helps humans forcefully reject bad behavior, Sapolsky warns that it carries a massive social cost!
Once the insula registers moral disgust, it immediately sounds the alarm to the amygdala, the brain’s headquarters for fear, aggression, and threat detection.
Because moral disgust is deeply context-dependent and subjective, the insula easily misinterprets things that are merely different (e.g., unfamiliar cultural practices, dietary habits, or lifestyles) as being disgustingly wrong!
This is when you get the complication of US vs THEM!
Then again it’s no complication when you say that Paresh Rawal is a great actor!
For now simply give rest to all the real estate of your brain!
Shubh ratri…
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