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The Truth About Our Lizard Brain
How the fight, flight, or freeze model oversimplifies things.
Who hasn’t heard remarks about our “lizard brain”, and how it directs our most primal reactions, like what to do in a panic situation — fight, flee, or freeze? Too bad not many people know where the idea comes from and how true, or false, it actually is.
In the 1960s, American physician and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007) formulated a model about the evolution of the brain which he explained in detail in his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution. MacLean propounds that the triune brain consists of the reptilian complex, the limbic system, and the neocortex, each independently conscious parts of the brain that were sequentially added to the brain over the course of evolution.
In the early days of neuroanatomy, scientists like MacLean believed that the forebrains of birds and reptiles were dominated by the part of the brain that is physically located near the bottom of the brain, the basal ganglia. This reptilian complex — or lizard brain — is responsible for instinctual behaviors like those involved with aggression, self-preservation, and fear of the unknown.
fight, flight, or freeze
