How do “instincts” actually work, and what part of the brain is that located in?
In: Biology
Instincts are basically “prewired” skills/experiences. They work exactly like a learned response, just that you don’t have to learn them because they are written into your DNA.
Just how learned functions of your brain they can be located in many areas, depending on what kind of instinct they are. For example prewired emotions (like primal fears) are located in your amygdala together with all learned emotions.
In the field of animal behavior, we talk about *fixed action patterns* – complex behaviors that appear to be pure instinct. Like other commenters have said, this involves some hard-wiring. There are specific brain cells that are strongly connected to each other – when one is triggered, the rest of them fire as well.
My favorite example is the greylag goose. If a nesting goose sees an egg outside of its nest, the “I see egg” cell fires. This causes the “go to egg” and “roll egg to nest” cells to fire, and the goose retrieves the egg.
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