The elephant in the room

Laboratory News has offered many a scientific take on the festive season over the years. There was our attempt to help Santa out with his deliveries should the time come when humans occupy other planets in the solar system, (he’d need, for example, only to pay a yuletide visit every 687 days if we resided on Mars); our examination of the gastronomic heart of the season – the roast lunch (it’s all down to some rather nifty carbohydrate chemistry in the form of the Maillard reaction); and our suggestion that Christmas trees may hold the key to arthritis pain relief.

And yet it strikes us there is a question still to be tackled. An elephant in the room you could say. Tinsel covered and swaying gently after one too many eggnogs perhaps, but an elephant none the less. The problem concerns that most hallowed of traditions – the giving of gifts.

Why would we – the honed result of a frankly brutal evolutionary selection process – ‘give’ anything? Take perhaps, but give? That, surely, is a trait reserved for those species trapped on an evolutionary dead-end. Generosity must surely result in genetic obscurity?

….and a happy new year!   

Ok – all this is hardly festive cheer – but it is true that altruism has been seen as a thorn in the side of Darwinism. In its most naked form Darwin described a natural world where the individual was sacrosanct; creatures had to be selfish in order to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. Ergo ‘selfishness’ in all of its forms was preserved and formed the behavioural heart of the next generation.

Yet examples of altruism abound, and not just in our own species. Vampire bats, American buffalo, dolphins, termites and even slime mould display it. The altruistic club clearly has a many and varied membership. Consequently the biological root of altruism has a powerful influence on behaviour.

But how does all this tie into our love of gift giving? Well perhaps it simply makes us feel good.  Studies have shown that the areas of the brain that are responsible for reward do come into play when we display altruistic behaviour – but, says cognitive neuroscientist Dr Jordan Grafman, there is more to it. He thinks there must be other brain areas which combine this reward with the act of altruism. So can he possibly posit where this might be, this neurological home of altruism? Well – yes, he can. The Prefrontal cortex is key he says – especially when there is a ‘cost’ associated with the activity. “For example, you want to give, but it’s going to cost you something. The anteriopolar prefrontal cortex is one of the most evolved areas of the brain, and it’s just a very very important part for overcoming primitive responses.”

So there you go. Christmas cheer has a biological dwelling. Simple. Right?

Wrong. The complexities of altruism still cause huge debate in the scientific community. Even its existence is not certain, could altruism just be selfishness in posh clothes? Darwinistically speaking it seems as if it must be. But details are currently sketchy – kin selection, reciprocal altruism, behavioural memes and game theory – just a few of the possible explanations of altruistic behaviour.

But does it really matter? For humans perhaps not – humanity is often defined by our tendency for prima facie altruism, and what better time for this to come to the fore than when presents are involved!