Little brains wire themselves to their world.Īn infant brain is not a miniature adult brain-it’s a brain awaiting a set of wiring instructions so that it can complete its development. You and I-and even a lizard-have the same brain plan as a blood-sucking lamprey. What we’ve learned is that all vertebrates-animals with a backbone-share the same brain plan. But since the 1970s, scientists have had ways of peering deep into the molecular structure of brain cells called neurons to see the genes and other genetic material inside. In the early to mid-20th century, when neuroscientists studied the brain largely by looking at different brains of different animals with the naked eye, it appeared as if primate brains had parts that rodent brains didn’t, and that rodent brains had parts that lizard brains didn’t. “You and I-and even a lizard-have the same brain plan as a blood-sucking lamprey.” The myth that human brain contains an inner lizard, which occasionally wrests control away from your rational self, can be traced all the way back to Plato. It constantly makes appearances in news stories about the brain, in expensive executive training programs, and it’s the basis of modern economic theory and the legal system. Have you ever heard that lurking deep inside your brain is some ancient lizard brain, an inner beast, which occasionally hijacks the rest of your brain causing you to do things and say things that you will later regret? Your “inner lizard” is very popular.
The only animal with a lizard brain is a lizard. This insight offers the opportunity to better understand some of the major challenges that face us today, like depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and the fact that mental and physical illnesses really have deep, common metabolic causes and that social stress can make people more vulnerable to viral infections. Everything you think and feel, imagine and do and see is in the service of that regulation.
The most important job that your brain has is regulating the systems of your body. The most important job that your brain has is not thinking, or feeling-it’s not even seeing, hearing, tasting or smelling.
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