Red, Green Brain
Why is it important to know about the Responsive and Reactive settings of the brain?
Taking in the good is a foundational practice that compensates for the brain’s preferential encoding of negative experiences and builds inner resources. More fundamentally, I am interested in naturalizing Buddhist psychology in a frame of evolutionary neuropsychology and operationalizing states and factors of non-craving (broadly defined in the Buddhist sense) in neuropsychological terms.
I’m using a conceptual framework that draws on polyvagal theory, Higgins work on promotion/prevention, and other work to posit three core motivational systems in the brain – Avoiding harms, Approaching rewards, and Attaching to others – which have two primary “settings.” When a person experiences that his or her core needs are met for safety, satisfaction, and connection (tracking the three motivational systems), the related system tends to default to its Responsive setting, in which there is little or no basis for craving in that system; in this state, the body refuels and repairs itself and the mind rests in a basic sense of peace, contentment, and love (again, tracking the systems).
On the other hand, when the person experiences that one or more core needs are not being met, the related system shifts into its Reactive setting, there’s a fight-flight-freeze stress response cascade, the body burns resources, and the mind shifts into a basic sense of “hatred,” “greed,” and heartache (using two of the traditional Buddhist mental “poisons” in broad terms and tracking the three motivational systems).
While Reactive bursts can be adaptive, especially under the conditions in which our ancestors evolved, chronic Reactive states create significant allostatic load as well as a lot of unnecessary anxiety, irritation, frustration, drivenness, envy, interpersonal disturbances, and shame.
Consequently, repeatedly taking in the good both down-regulates Reactivity and increases Responsivity in the moment plus gradually internalizes a felt sense of needs met as well as inner resources that together help stabilize a person in the Responsive mode even during challenging conditions, thus over time undoing many of the underlying neuropsychological causes of craving and thus suffering (broadly defined).
Where does the “fight or flight” response come from? Does it have to do with the primitive/reptile brain or the emotional brain?
These distinctions about the brain – fight or flight response, primitive/reptile brain, emotional brain – are used a lot these days, but they’re inherently fuzzy.
The amygdala does initiate the fight or flight response through inputs into the hypothalamus (triggering the hormonal part of that response) and to brainstem control centers of the sympathetic nervous system (triggering the neural parts of that response). Some aspects of this response are emotional but some are not; and, complicating the distinctions further (among the fight or flight response, primitive/reptile brain, and emotional brain), some emotional shadings the amygdala is involved in don’t activate the fight or flight response. For example, the amygdala is involved in positive emotion processing. Some parts of our emotional life don’t involve the amygdala at all. See the complexities, here, in terms of the categories?
Plus, reptiles have a functioning basal ganglia, which is part of the subcortex on top of the brainstem and very involved in motivation, and to some extent, emotion. In the brainstem, there are nodes that can produce rage and fear, as well as nodes with oxytocin receptors (social system). The brainstem participates in emotion, and the so-called reptile brain is more than the brainstem: so, more complications. Also, the cortex is very involved in emotion, it’s not just the subcortex and brainstem: complications cubed!
“Amygdala hijack” just means that the thalamus inputs into the amygdala with sensory information (like positive “carrots” and negative “sticks”) arrives before those inputs get to the prefrontal cortex. So the amygdala gets a second or two head-start over the cooler reasoning processes coming down from the prefrontal cortex. Also, more generally, the brain as a whole participates in “emotional hijack” that goes beyond the amygdala alone. The amygdala part of the emotional hijack is often overstated: it’s just a small head start. Still, in cases of prior sensitization of the brain due to trauma, that head start could make a big difference.
Overall, I think there is a natural and fine flow in the culture in which there is an initial enthusiasm for a subject and overstatement and blurring of distinctions, and then a second wave comes through to clarify things. That’s what’s happening with these fields now.
How does being-awareness relate to our underlying animal nature?
For me an underlying truth or theme is surrender, humility, and opening out into our animal nature node in a vast net of causes. One of my favorite practices is to soften, opening into the body in which the inner lizard, rat, and monkey long to feel safe, fed, and loved but are primed by mother nature to doubt and seek in order to survive and pass on genes – even though they are actually already truly safe fed and loved. This means that they need lots and lots of experiences of fullness again and again for the sweet truth to pass through Mother Nature’s well-intended veils of delusion and into their lying brain.
I question your paradigm of the reptilian, mammalian, and primate brain in terms of the development of our emotions. I’ve read other theories that dispute this.
I’m familiar with the work of other brain-research scholars, such as Lisa Feldman Barrett, Daniel Kahneman, Jaak Panksepp, and Steve Porges. With respect, I think that the careful and nuanced way I write about the development of our brains is in fact scientifically accurate. (Much as the work of other scholars is scientifically accurate; different scholars emphasize different facts, and then sometimes rather different interpretations.)
In broad outline, the brain is indeed structured in three major layers that emerged during the reptilian, mammalian, and primate/human stages of evolution, with a high degree of similarity between the genetic instructions for and operation of each layer in us today and that layer in our mammal or reptile cousins. And today the whole brain works together for our functioning, with each part of it making its contributions.
With mental training, we can draw on the capabilities of more evolutionarily recent regions to manage older ones, but those older regions within us do have the qualities I attribute to them – and even with mental training we can see their rigidity, impulsivity, and vulnerabilities in everyday life.
