Sublime

When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.

A different level of brain activity is involved for each response: the mammalian fight-or-flight system, which is protective and keeps us from shutting down, and the reptilian brain, which produces the collapse response.

Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror. Att

Just a few weeks of stress causes neurons, particularly neurons in the hippocampus (Illustration 4), a part of the brain involved in memory and learning, to begin to wither and die.

Estrogen is neuroprotective, shielding brain cells from the effects of oxidative stress and amyloid beta toxicity, high levels of which have been linked to the type of cellular damage that occurs in Alzheimer’s disease.

Of the many emerging descriptions of our social brain, for me the simplest and most elegant is the highly regarded Social Baseline Theory of Lane Beckes and James A. Coan, two researchers at the University of Virginia.

Cerebral activity in the prefrontal area of the brain, the part involved in executive functions, decision-making and other complex cognitive processes, may be reduced.12 Your body may produce lower levels of cortisol, which is released to help the body respond to stress.13