Triune Brain
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The Triune Brain and Evolutionary Psychology
In the last section, Animal Cognitive Studies, we saw that as animals where trained to refer to objects symbolically they were able to overcome their impulsive instincts and got the logic of the experiments. We have the same problem, how many times have you heard "Stop Yelling, just tell me what the problem is". What that implies is "stop running on the emotional circuits of your brain; instead, use the rational circuits of you cerebrum".
Lets take a closer look at that in some detail: the human brain morphology, from a functional, behavioral perspective.
The morphology of the human brain consists of the same fore, mid and hind brains that we covered in the last chapter, it has simply evolved to its present shape. The Triune Brain Model covers brain physiology from a functional, behavioral perspective. It is an evolutionary model that describes the human brain as the superposition of the reptilian brain, the early mammalian brain (emotional brain - limbic system) and the higher mammalian, cerebral brain. In that model our behavior, our psychology, is driven by the evolutionary physiology that makes up the brain itself. This discipline of study is called Evolutionary Psychology.
In detail:
1 - The primitive (reptile) brain evolved from the hind brain. It consists mainly of brain stem, medulla, pons, cerebellum, among others. It handles reflexive and basic internal body (regulatory) functions, e.g. glands, heart, intestines, etc. It also handles certain primitive behavioral traits, instinctive and reflex reactions, sexuality, aggression, territoriality, etc.
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2 - The mid-brain (old mammalian) consists of the structures of the limbic system. Behaviorally, it corresponds to the brain of the so-called inferior mammals (e.g. rodents). It handles functions that allow us to distinguish between the emotionally agreeable and disagreeable: playfulness, parental affinity, love, hate, sadness, joy, etc. and the memories associated with these feelings. Therefore, it is also referred to as the emotional brain. |
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3 - The cerebral or rational (new mammalian) brain, consists of the neo-cortex and some sub-cortical neural groups. It corresponds to the brain of the superior mammals, including the primates and humans (lets not forget the cetaceans, that is whales and dolphins). It handles all of our associative memory functions that involve all of our 5 senses, and in us at least, we know it also accommodates abstraction, symbolic thinking and communication including language, reading, writing and mathematics.
There is an order to our behavioral aspects that this physiology engenders. The behavioral aspects of the reptile and emotional brains are by enlarge subconscious. We act reflexively, are turned on and off, we like and dislike, etc. without much deliberation. Our conscious, deliberative behavior is the domain the cerebral brain's neural networks. On that note, it is well established that the reptile, emotional and cerebral circuits of our brains evoke behavioral traits in that order. That is, reptile brain stimuli trump the emotional and cerebral stimuli, and emotional brain stimuli trump cerebral brain stimuli (as a rule). This fact is regularly used by public relations operators to spin their messages covering diverse arenas from product advertising to political rhetoric. It is no accident that politicians hold arbitrary babies (emotional brain stimuli) and sports car ads render scantly clad women (reptile brain stimuli). As educated as we like to think we are, our behavior is greatly governed by our reptile and emotional brains, subconsciously.
Together, the integrated neural network that is the triune brain forms our concept of reality, the cumulative coalescence of perception.
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