Sublime

médecin français Jean Itard (1774-1838),

the brainstem is the arbiter of whether we respond to threats either by mobilizing our energy for combat or for flight, or by freezing in helplessness, collapsing in the face of an overwhelming situation. But whichever of these responses is chosen, when we are in survival mode our reactivity makes it quite challenging, if not outright impossible, t

An enormous number of people have influenced my thinking, but three were particularly important: William Braud, Barbara Babcock, and Edmund Leach. Parapsychologist William Braud integrated an enormous range of findings with his model of lability and inertia in psi processes. Barbara Babcock is the most significant interpreter of the trickster figur

Emotional intensity is defined by the smoke alarm, the amygdala, and its counterweight, the watchtower, the medial prefrontal cortex. The context and meaning of an experience are determined by the system that includes the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the hippocampus.

If behavior is already tuned and controlled appropriately for survival—if risk is already avoided, as dictated by the projection to the lateral hypothalamus—what is the point of the preference, or subjective feeling, provided by the connection to the VTA?

The neo-cortex must elaborate on instinctual information, not control it.

This is the Functional Freeze - a term coined by Peter Levine, whose background is in medical biophysics and psychology. He is another incredible contributor to our understanding of nervous systems.