Lisa Feldman Barrett is a professor of psychology at Northeastern College. She is the creator of a number of books, together with How Feelings Are Made: The Secret Lifetime of the Mind.
When an individual views {a photograph} of a furry, looming spider or a slithering snake in a laboratory experiment, scientists normally see markers of elevated electrical exercise deep in that individual’s mind, in a area referred to as the periaqueductal grey (PAG). When a caged mouse smells a cat and freezes, scientists observe related adjustments within the mouse’s PAG. What’s the plain conclusion? The PAG controls fight-or-flight responses of mammals in threatening conditions.
However what if brains don’t have devoted circuits for combating and fleeing? Folks clearly expertise threats, however is menace detection actually a major mode of the mind with its personal neural circuitry? A physique of current proof from my lab and elsewhere means that we don’t undergo life always detecting threats and reacting with flight-or-fight circuits. Quite brains function primarily by prediction, not response. All brains always anticipate the wants of the physique and try to satisfy these wants earlier than they come up. They search to cut back uncertainty to outlive and thrive in circumstances which are solely partially predictable.
