Retained Primitive Reflexes

The amazingly adaptive perceptual functions of the back of the cortex have embedded that object into your body-maps so that it is neurally experienced like an extension of your body. This is how we can drive rapidly on a freeway or park a car in a tight space, use a scalpel with precision, or attain a .300 batting average.

Recall that half of the input to layer 1 comes from layer 5 cells in neighboring columns and regions of the cortex. This information represents what was happening moments before.

The brain stem (sometimes called the reptilian brain, although brain stem is more correct): includes the cerebellum (the structure at the bottom of the brain that plays an active role in motor control and sensorimotor processes); controls instinctual survival behaviors, muscle control, balance, breathing, and heartbeat. Very reactive to direct stim

Deeper inside the brain and closer to the brain stem—where the brain meets the spinal column—are older, more primitive structures. They control our automatic behaviors, such as breathing and swallowing, or the startle response we feel when someone leaps out from behind a bush.

Notice how your two middle fingertips rest on top of the limbic-thumb and touch the brainstem-palm, and are also linked directly to the cortex-fingers. So the middle prefrontal area is literally one synapse away from neurons in the cortex, the limbic area, and the brainstem. And, as I’ll discuss later, it even has functional pathways that connect u