AMYGDALA HIJACK
Let’s back go on a trip back in time to the days of prehistoric humans and sabre-toothed tigers. Let me introduce you to Mr Red-Eye, our caveman ancestor living in the Savannah in Africa.
At that time, the human brain wasn’t very advanced, like yours is today. It couldn’t do calculus, indulge in philosophical rationalisation or solve complex math and accounting problems. Our ancestor’s brain was highly optimised for one thing: survival. After all, back in those days our ancestor was at the mercy of carnivores, who would have seen his fat layered body as their ideal meal.
This story is about the day when Red-Eye was out looking for food, when suddenly he comes face-to-face with a sabre-toothed tiger. Now, Red-Eye has to make a decision: should I run to save my life, or should I stay to kill this animal for dinner? And how much time does he have to make this decision? A split second! Any longer and Mr. Red-Eye would be the sabre-tooth’s dinner.
The human brain, as primitive as it was, had to come up with a mechanism that enabled it to make these split-second survival decisions. And it did. It developed a system to identify and respond to potential life-threatening situations. Today, we call these decisions that your ancestor Mr. Red Eye had to make as the brain’s fight or flight decisions.
Here’s what happened, physiologically, to Mr. Red-Eye, when he spotted that sabre-toothed tiger: the information from his eyes first made its way to a tiny little portion of the brain called the amygdala, which functions as the brain’s personal alarm system. When the alarm system – the amygdala – got the signal that there was a sabre-toothed tiger ready to pounce, it launched a series of signals to his brain that prompted drastic physiological changes throughout his body.
His amygdala cut off oxygen supply to his brain, thereby hijacking his ability to think logically, because, logical thinking is a time-consuming and energy draining activity, and not the best thing to do when faced with a sabre-tooth.
His brain ordered his adrenal glands to pump out adrenalin giving Mr. Red-Eye that extra dose of strength and speed to fight or take to flight. His ˈres.pə.rə.tɔːr.i/ respiratory and cardiovascular system fuelled his muscles with extra oxygen. The amygdala had focussed Mr. Red-Eye’s attention and senses on the sabre-toothed tiger and his surroundings, making sure no stray thoughts distracted him from the threat at hand.
His amygdala had helped Mr. Red Eye survive. If his brain hadn’t the ability to bring about these physiological changes, well, you would not have been sitting here watching this video.
But, why are we talking about Mr Red-Eye and his brain?
Now, the amygdala, was a system that the brain developed to help pre-historic humans to survive. The human brain has evolved greatly since our caveman days. We have developed the ability to think logically, and handle complex mental tasks that require thinking long and hard about a problem, rather than make split second impulsive decisions. Yet, evolution did not make us shed our caveman brain.
Rather, it created newer layers of mass on-top of our pre-historic caveman brain. Meaning: you still have the same pre-historic brain structure as you’re ancestor Mr. Red Eye, only it lies below your thinking/ logical brain.
Today, it’s rare that we face an extreme emergency that requires the amygdala to spring into action, but it does so, nevertheless.
When we feel threatened, we lash out at people without thinking, we back-bite and spread rumors, we indulge in violence… It is your amygdala hijacking your logical brain.
It is the amygdala that hijacks our logical brain, when we feel threatened by a colleague, who seems to be getting more attention from a boss thereby threatening our career growth. It is our amygdala kicking in, when we feel insulted by a colleague in public and our social position feels threatened a result. In each of these situations, the amygdala responds by cutting off oxygen supply to the brain, and prompting split-second decisions that are not based on logic, but purely on instinct.
