1) 3 parts to the "Coping Brain"
A) Reptilian.
The term "reptilian" refers to our primitive, instinctive brain function that is shared by all reptiles and mammals, including humans. It is the most powerful and oldest of our coping brain functions since without it we would not be alive.
B) Emotional
The emotional coping function is also known as the mammalian brain since it is common to all mammals whose babies are born live and completely dependent upon their mother for survival. Neuroscientists, refer to this small but essential brain function as the limbic system. As we will see, without our emotional brain mothers would not feel an instinctive need to nurture and feed their young. Nor would babies recognize and sense that their survival depends upon staying close to their mother for protection. This relatively small but important brain function serves a variety of coping and sensory purposes including our capacity for emotional attachment to others. When we talk about our "feelings" we are describing sensations and impulses arising from our emotional coping brain.
We can’t help think of our emotional coping brain without realizing its connection to reptilian instincts that also help us to survive. But emotional brain does much more than keep us
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By contrast, our thinking (neocortex) human coping brain has the ability to learn and use language. These functions require the linking of learning brain cells we call neurons. These microscopic, multi-functional neurons are building blocks not only for thinking and learning, but for deciding the way we behave. Thinking brain makes possible our organizing and planning abilities. It also enables us to figure out the meaning of our emotional experiences, such as why we are upset or hurt. The meanings of emotional experiences are what we call our
Disease: any abnormal functioning of the body, organs, tissues, or cells that create the inability to function normally
How does the brain cope? There are several methods in which the brain can cope in different situations. There are three parts of the coping brain: reptilian (survival), thinking (neocortex), and emotional (mammalian). The reptilian part of the brain deals with survival and brings out our instinctive side when hurt, threatened, when wanting to reproduce, or when angry. It allows the inner reptile take over and allow us to survive in a certain manner. The emotional pert of our brain is called the mammalian. Emotions can connect to memories and faces, for example, you like your best friend because they make you smile. You connect a negative feeling to a bully because they make you feel bad, so you avoid them. This is where the emotional part of
The human brain can react in much the same way. Neurodegenerative diseases are telltale signs of a "glitch" in the neural mechanical processes within the brain. Thus, pathological problems of the brain demonstrate how the brain controls movement and behavior. It is evident in the physical as well as emotional behavior. (5) It also illustrates the interaction between the central nervous system to the peripheral nervous system. There must be connections between neural activity within the brain and the rest of the central and peripheral nervous systems. One can also understand an illustration of the brain as being a "box" composed of interconnected smaller boxes. These integrated boxes in turn demonstrate the concept that, "Brain=Behavior=Being."
The feeling of stress is inevitable to avoid and remove entirely from our lives. As we go through life and our stress levels rise, for various reasons, resulting in the feeling of worry, anxiety, insomnia, etc. We search for strategies to assist with decreasing the feeling of stress or to better help cope with it. Coping is defined as “managing taxing circumstances, expending effort to solve life’s problems, and seeking to master or reduce stress” (p521). Individuals perform a wide range of different activities to help manage stress and decrease its effects such as working out at a gym regularly, attending routine social gatherings, and reading books. One stress reducer that our society often overlooks is nature and its benefits. There have been studies on forest bathing, which involves walking a forest trail or sitting on a boulder and observing nature with all five senses, that proves to minimize stress.
LeDoux, J. (1998). The emotional brain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. (Chapter 4 will go on LN).
Life without emotions would lack meaning, texture, richness, joy and the connection with others (Leahy, R.L., et al, 2012). Emotion can be defined as various states of feelings, thoughts and verbal interactions that individuals can experience (White el al., 2012). It is from this that individuals are able to create relationships with others, in this case infants are able to create attachments to their parents. For the purpose of this essay, emotions can be categorised into two parts; over-regulation and under-regulation. Over-regulation is one's ability to suppress evidence of emotional distress in various situ...
I chose to read the book, “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” written my Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. Over the past 30 years as a researcher at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison he has made great strides connecting human emotions with brain functions and location. Davidson is also a devout Buddhist who incorporates Buddhist teaching and practice into his work. Throughout this book Davidson refers back to his experiences in India and Sir Lanka meditating and teachings from the Dalai Lama. This book covers longevity of Davidson research and the six emotional continuums that human’s fall into, which he calls our emotional fingerprint.
Hamilton, L.W. (2012). The Brain and Our Emotional Future: Foundations of Emotions [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences Online Course site: rutgersonline.net.
Most of the body’s functions such as, thinking, emotions, memories and so forth are controlled by the brain. It serves as a central nervous system in the human body. The mind is the intellect/consciousness that originates in the human brain and manifests itself in emotions, thoughts, perceptions and so forth. This means that the brain is the key interpreter of the mind’s content. Jackson and Nagel seem to resist identifying what we call “mental events” with brain events, for different reasons, while J.J.C. Smart takes the opposing view.
Throughout the history of science many have learned that the brain is a powerful tool that can help you, make you cry, angry, overthink and many more dangerous outcomes. The brains thought is the value of life is finding ways to be content with oneself and exploring quantity of fatality and how much it means. For many it is what makes them happy, for example Roger Ebert. Ebert quoted “ when i am my problems become invisible and i am the same person i always was.
Just like every other scientist who has and will try to find an answer to the human brain and emotions, Joseph LeDoux also claims that we will never fully understand the neural foundation of emotion through humans. Yet, to soothe his curiosity of the many questions, he performs an experimental try towards animals and rats to unravel the brain’s emotional hidden secrets. He gives logical interpretation of what emotions are, how they operate in the brain, and why they have such important impacts on our lives. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life written by Joseph LeDoux manages to blend psychology and biology in the neuroscience fields to portray the correlation among the brain and the emotion and allows readers to fairly define emotions in their own opinion and understand the complexity behind it through his well studied facts and quality themes t...
Human brains are weighed in at a whopping three pounds, which is a monstrous size for a creature of our body size and weight. In comparison, chimpanzees have brains in which are fractional to our own brains, one-third the size, although chimpanzees have a very similar frame to us. Most brain-size difference reflects the expansion of the cerebral cortex caused by evolution, a group of regions in the brain that supports “higher thinking” and sophisticated cognitive functions such as language, self-awareness, and problem solving. Not only does the human have more neurons, some one hundred billion neurons (Randerson), in the association cortex, there have been brain imaging studies showing humans have a greater number of fibers creating a bridge (Metaphor) of connections, connecting the brain regions involved in functions humans are known to specialize in
According to Brothers, “the social brain” can be described as “the higher cognitive and affective systems in the brain that evolved as a result of increasingly complex social selective pressures,” and it is these systems that underlie our ability to function as highly social animals and provide the substrate for intact social cognition, social behavior and affective responsiveness (Brothers 1990, Burns 2006). In other words, the evolution of a larger brain in primates has led to a number of relative behavioral specializations, the most important for our case being social cognition; it is these specializations that allow us to meaningfully evaluate a complex situation and interact with other
One scientist, Damasio, provided an explanation how emotions can be felt in humans biologically. Damasio suggested, “Various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a second order representation. This mapping of the organism and the object most likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows “to whom this is happening.” The “seer” and the “seen,” the “thought” and the “thinker” are one in the same.” By mapping the brain scientists can have a better understandi...
Just as the brain allows us to see, smell, taste, think, talk, and move, it is the organ that allows us to love — or not. The systems in the human brain that allow us to form and maintain emotional relationships develop during infancy and the first years of life. Experiences during this early vulnerable period of life are critical to shaping the capacity to form intimate and emotionally healthy relationships. Empathy, caring, sharing, inhibition of aggression, capacity to love, and a host of other characteristics of a healthy, happy, and productive person are related to the core attachment capabilities which are formed in infancy and early