Are You Human?

Are you human?

The brain is the most complex organ in the human body, and it’s constantly changing. It may look similar on the surface, but every single person on the planet has their own individual wiring within the brain itself. This is because we’ve all lived different lives, and even if we live through the same events or traumas as another person, we still experience it differently, so it shapes our brains differently. 

The general area of where things are stored in our brains is the same, but the specific location differs for everyone. This is why brain surgery can take many many hours, because the surgeon has to map out exactly where you store each individual function or process. 

You can split the brain up in many different ways. You can split it up into the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. You can go a step further and split it into the telencephalon, the diencephalon, the mesencephalon, the metencephalon, and the myelencephalon. You can split it up into its individual lobes: temporal, parietal, occipital, frontal, cerebellum, etc. No matter what you’re trying to assess, there is a way to split the brain up into areas related to it.

The way we’re splitting the brain today is into the three sections that categorise our states of functional capacity. Our reptilian brain, our mammalian brain, and our human brain.

The reptilian portion of our brain is involved in basic survival functions. This includes our ability to breath, our heart rate, and temperature regulation. It is the part of our brain that is reflexive, there's no conscious thought that goes into any of the processes controlled by it. It's easy to understand the reptilian part of our brain if you picture an actual reptile, a snake. Most of the time snakes are quite docile, lying hidden in one place for a long period of time, only moving to hunt for food, or when it's under threat. 

The mammalian part of our brain is responsible for our 4 F’s. Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Reproduction… It’s a little more complicated than the reptilian brain, and is also referred to as the reactive brain. There's some conscious thought involved. Is that food safe to eat? Do I want to mate with that person? You see it in pets like cats or dogs, or other wild mammals. There’s a level of communication and decision making observable, but in quite a primal way compared to most humans.

The human brain is the most important part for us as humans. It's the part of the brain that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. If you’re a client of ours, you should already know which bit I'm talking about. The prefrontal cortex. The part of our brain responsible for all our executive functions, like decision making, impulse control, motivation, personality, mood, and many more. When active, this part of our brain allows us to function well in social situations, think logically and rationally when under stress, communicate our needs clearly,  and understand others around us. It allows us to function in society. Unfortunately, this is also the part of our brain that starts to shut down when under high levels or stress or pain. So we start to revert back to our mammalian, or even our reptilian instincts. We’re no longer the person we used to be, struggle to maintain relationships, lose focus, lack motivation, make poor decisions and so on.

The reason most of our clients should already know about the prefrontal cortex, is because that's the part of your brain that gets fired up when we adjust you! If you want more motivation, improved mood, better decision making skills, stronger relationships and more, then get yourself booked in and see how we can help you!