neuropolitics

Neuropolitics is a science which investigates the interplay between the brain and politics. It combines work from a variety of scientific fields which includes neuroscience, political science, psychology, behavioral genetics, primatology, and ethology. Often, neuropolitics research borrow methods from cognitive neuroscience to investigate classic questions from political science such as how people make political decisions, form political / ideological attitudes, evaluate political candidates, and interact in political coalitions. However, another line of research considers the role that evolving political competition has had on the development of the brain in humans and other species. The research in neuropolitics often intersects with work in genopolitics, political psychology, political physiology, sociobiology, neuroeconomics, and neurolaw.

==History== Philosophers, including Plato and John Locke, have long theorized about the nature of human thought and used these theories as a basis for their political philosophy. In Locke's view, humans entered the world with a mind that was a blank slate and formed governments as a result of the necessities imposed by the state of nature. Though Locke was trained in medicine, he became skeptical about the value of anatomical studies of the brain and concluded that no useful insights about mental faculties could be developed by studying it.