The Encephalon

“Everything we do, every thought we've ever had, is produced by the human brain. But exactly how it operates remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries, and it seems the more we probe its secrets, the more surprises we find”. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, New York.

The Brain is the Universe folded into the skull. It is both a mechanism and a miracle. A lump of flesh that composes poetry. A muscle that comprehends differential geometry. A bundle of nerves that can flood the entire body with different hormones. A brawn full of electricity. An organ that dreams of God. A squishy lump that desires money, food, sex, sleep and peace. It questions its own existence and doubts even as it believes. It wants freedom yet it is fearful of uncertainty. It imagines heaven while at the same time it is terrified of death.  It can drive a person to the edge of anxiety, fear and depression while it can also make one experience happiness, altered states of bliss and immense harmony. It is also, nevertheless the only organ that can suffer from thought itself. This page is all about you and your encephala. Your brain. My brain. Our brains.

To make this reading easy as I put forth to you a summary of a very complex and multifarious organ of the human organism, the brain shall be divided and discussed with focus only on its triune nature for now. Let’s begin bottom up...

The Reptilian brain. The dinosaur brain. Touch the nape of your neck and take your fingers 4 inches upwards. That your primitive lizard brain. It’s around 500 million years old. It is called the lizard brain because we have evolved from fish just like reptiles did and we share this brain with all reptiles. Even before we were monkeys. Other names are primitive brain and survival brain because this brain is responsible for basic survival instincts, such as breathing, heart rate, balance. digestion and body temperature regulation. It also governs instinctive behaviours like feeding, fighting, fleeing (survival responses to trauma) and reproduction. These functions operate without conscious thought, triggering automatic responses to stimuli, including instinctive reactions to danger. Unlike the higher brain regions, the reptilian brain is less adaptable and tends to repeat instinctual behaviours in a fixed, predictable manner. Jumping away from a snake before consciously registering the threat or instinctively reacting to a sudden loud noise like thunder are examples of reptilian brain functions. Under trauma, this whole part of the brain is hijacked, and logic does not work. It’s only about safety. Hence one can say the reptilian brain is extremely reactive. But grounding techniques used in Somatic Experiencing like breath and body awareness, soft touch and slow movements to increase felt sense help to calm its survival response.

Next is the Feeling brain. In the middle of your head, tucked away deep within is the paleomammalian brain or the limbic system or the emotional brain. Take your finger from behind your ears and trace a circle all over your head in the middle. That is your emotional mass. It developed in our skull on top of the reptilian brain around 300 million years ago. The limbic brain consists of a group of brain structures that regulate emotion, memory, motivation, and behaviour. Here memories are formed and accessed and emotions like love, anger, joy and fear are stored and processed. The emotional brain is responsible for our day-to-day tasks like reward seeking, social bonding, forming attachments and basic hunger drive for accomplishing tasks. When faced with stress, this part of the brain triggers a hormone called cortisol to flood into the blood. Memory gets distorted and our perception of time changes. Prolonged trauma leads to shrinking of the emotional brain leading to C- PTSD and depression. This brain layer responds to rhythm, warmth, connection because it’s always asking – am I being loved enough? Am I enough? Hence co-regulation and communication with another human being, music, routine in life and safe touch soothe the limbic system. Somatic exercises like yoga, body shaking, tapping, and dance help regulate the emotional encephala.

The topper is the Neocortex. The youngest layer of the brain. The pre- frontal cortex. Also called the rational or thinking brain. Touch your forehead and trace your hand from your forehead to the top of the middle of your head. That is the whole neo brain. It is called neo because its new. Just 2-3 million years old. It developed as the spine started straightening, our gait changed from four limbs to two and we started to lose our monkeyness. The neocortex comprises the largest part of the cerebral brain and makes up approximately half the volume of the human brain. It is responsible for the neuronal computations of attention, thought, rational thinking, perception and episodic memory. Abstract thought, language, conscious planning, problem-solving, creativity, philosophy, mathematics and ego are all the glory of this cortical part. However, during trauma, it goes completely offline, and its logic shuts down as the body takes over due to the reptilian and emotional brain overriding the proud neocortex. It does not let you think your way out of a fear state because the emotional brain has flooded the blood with so many hormones so often you feel tongue- tied, frozen or blank in your thought process, thanks to this highly sensitive piece of flesh.  As Jeffrey Eugenides, an American writer said- “Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind”.

To re-engage this layer, essentially the lower brains must feel safe first. And here the work of Somatic Experiencing helps to regulate and balance. Once the reptilian and emotional brains are regulated, then reflection on instinctual behaviours, journaling, therapy, movement (yoga, swimming, walking, running, gym) and purposeful insight become powerful tools to healing.

So stacked one on top of the other, huddled in a bony encasement this highly electric, delicate, creative, mouldable, neuroplastic piece of muscle runs our lives. It is man’s highest achievement in the evolutionary scale of all life formation on this planet- that we possess this thing called an encephalon. It is our pride- when we moved from all fours to two legs, our spine straightened and we needed to evolve for this piece of fleshy machinery to run the body’s processes from cellular to organic, from conscious to unconscious, from logical to spiritual.  But alas! We are capable of being both traumatized and liberated by the encephalon. It is after all the most intelligent muscle in the body, isn’t it? 

“Bruce Banner: Brain-the biggest muscle in the body. Thor: I've got more muscle, so technically more brains!”

The movie- Thor Ragnarök