The Pea-Sized Gland That Controls Your Thoughts | Random Thursday

in the 1998 cinematic treatise on neurobiology called the waterboy we got introduced to the medulla oblongata and the fact that it is what causes alligators to be foul-tempered and not as the ancients foretold because it has so many teeth and no toothbrush sorry if my 21 year old movie reference is too fresh for all you Yeats the medulla oblongata is a thing but it's not necessarily like the center of emotion or anything like that it actually coordinates a lot of automatic stuff communicating between the brain the spinal cord some body movement functionality that kind of thing with just a little bit of regulation of mood the movie was right though to associate that level of brain stem activity to an alligator you know a creature that evolved a long time before we did because that alligator level brain it never really went away through natural selection it's still in there in our brains and it controls you in more ways than you think we tend to think of ourselves as logical and reasonable people and most of the time we are despite every YouTube comment section in existence but logic is actually a fairly new development in our evolution there's actually something much deeper much more primal that controls us in ways that we don't really realize imagine the brain as sort of an Russian nesting doll containing three layers this is known as the triune brain it was first put forth by a neuroscientist Paul MacLean in the 1960s and he argued that these three layers correspond to reptilian paleomammalian and neomammalian stages of evolution with the reptilian complex for example controls more automatic and reflexive body functions like heart rate breathing balance stuff kind of under the hood that you don't to think about this is obviously the oldest part of the brain the newest part of the brain the neomammalian complex is the thinking brain responsible for abstract thought and creativity it also includes a prefrontal cortex which is where a lot of our slow thinking takes place in between these two is the paleomammalian complex and this well this is the man behind the curtain this is what really controls your life this is known as the limbic system and it controls basic functions and emotions like fear and anger behaviors like the fight-or-flight reflex and it also is the place where we store all of our memories and while your prefrontal cortex obviously the thing that's making all of your decisions it's making these decisions based off of the memories and the processes that are happening inside your limbic system you know for instance your high-level thinking brain might think it's completely irrational and illogical to throw a chair through a window but if the limbic system was feeding information to that neocortex that say the room was on fire and that was the only way out well then throwing a chair through a window would make perfect rational sense so you can imagine it as you're reacting and feeling brain for example studies have shown that people who are angry are more likely to criticize other people or if you're hungry more likely to judge others the whole hangry process in action the limbic system is located underneath the cerebral cortex and above the brainstem and consists of several structures that interact with each other the thalamus the hypothalamus the basal ganglia the hippocampus and the amygdala the thalamus acts kind of like a gatekeeper or a relay station all sensory information filters through it before going on to the cerebral cortex except smell which is why you can catch a certain smell and be you know quickly transported to another place or emotion automatically the thalamus also plays a role in memory storage plays role in emotions especially ones related to inspiration and pain it also plays a part in sleep and wakefulness some even think it has a role in consciousness the basal ganglia governs movement especially habitual behavior so the reason you don't think about how to draw out the shape of every letter when you're writing is because it's all controlled under the surface by the basal ganglia right in front of the thalamus is the hypothalamus it regulates hormones and it's connected to the autonomic nervous system which controls blood pressure heart rate breathing digestion and sexual response then we have the hippocampus which plays a major role in the formation of memories it also helps with spatial orientation and navigation and finally we arrive at the amygdala remember when I say there's something deeper and more primal when it comes to our decision-making well here we are the amygdala plays a role in emotional response basically anything that's important for your survival is handled through the amygdala it's often associated with fear and that's because back in the 1930s researchers actually removed the amygdala from the brains of some monkeys and when they did that they showed absolute fearlessness after that but your amygdala plays a much bigger role than just fear it's involved in social interactions imagining the future writing eating drinking and remember in the past there are some theories that say that it helps the brain to sort out ambiguity by associating different memories with different situations the whole associating a bell with when you eat thing that we talked about in the padlock video the point is the amygdala helps you to form memories and behaviors based around emotions it's also possible that it plays a role in depression there was a study that showed that when depressed people looked at pictures of angry faces or sad faces their amygdala activity picked up in ways that non-depressed people didn't but when viewing happy faces there wasn't any difference between depressed people and non-depressed people in terms of their amygdala activity one of the more interesting effects of the amygdala at least according to some studies is that it can actually sort of determine your political views according to an MRI study of 90 young adults people who describe themselves as conservatives seem to show more gray matter and more activity in their amygdala especially their right amygdala then did political liberals in an fMRI study on risk-taking showed the conservative people had more activity in their right amygdala as well kind of interesting that it's on the right amygdala the Association of political conservatism with the right amygdala a structure that's bilaterally sensitive to emotional salience II especially fear suggests an increased processing of potential signals for threats at dr. Mario eighth méndez in normal persons speak this means that somebody with an enlarged amygdala is going to be naturally more wired to kind of look for and react to threats and this might explain why conservative people who typically have large amygdala focus more on security and safety and react more strongly to fear messaging and there's also some interesting things that happen at the amygdala is damaged for example one study on the role of the amygdala and decision-making said that it triggers autonomic responses to emotional stimuli including monetary reward and Punishment but it found that people with damage to make delay lack the autonomic responses to reward and Punishment and consequently cannot utilize somatic marker type cues to guide future decision-making in other words if you have a damaged emotional Center you have a much harder time making decisions so you still think you're completely logical and damage to the anterior temporal lobe which plays a part in knowing facts and people and names and words and stuff like that can lead to something called kluver-bucy syndrome this is a weird in rare condition that can cause people to compulsively put things in their mouths do inappropriate sexual behaviors lose any kind of fear and not be able to recognize any objects so if our emotions ultimately dictate our decisions and how we live our lives what does this mean in a world that is increasingly being run by computer algorithms and it's interview with Joe Rogan Elon Musk talked about how the Internet is our collective limbic system saying that all the things that we like and hate and fear they're all there on the Internet and he also referred to Olympic resonance that the more engaging emotionally something is the more attention it receives AI and computers are all learning from this content and how we interact with that content and reframing the way we experience the world through that or as author and professor Derek to Kirk Kove wrote in a 2015 paper the internet has extended the influence of the limbic system of the individual body to the crowd and that social media can be equated to the amygdala which plays the role of the accelerator and determines the amount and size of emotional response to an event this sounds dystopian but he sees a future where this immediately accessible collective emotion could actually lead to a better world like imagine if the internet wasn't just a repository of information but also a collective understanding of the motions of the world you know like you you could use the internet obviously to find a place to eat and check the weather and all that but you could also see how the world is feeling right now you know and you can determine what your particular responsibility for that condition is right Stu Kirk Kove we have all kinds of bracelets that tell us about personal health in the future we'll have apps that keep us informed about the health of the world and that might open up a whole new way of understanding ourselves how do you feel about this does this sound logical to you does this get your emotions going talk about in the comments also real quick I know the holiday season is coming up so I wanted to take a second and talk a little bit about the shirts and the merch that's available at the store now of all this time I've been saying for people to go to answers with Joe calm slash shirts you can still do that but I've got a new place for you to go it's just answers with TOCOM slash store because I felt like it's kind of it's a lot more than just shirts on there there's posters or stickers there's mugs there's all kinds of different things so you can have your pick of fun nerdy things and so joe brandon type stuff if you go to answers go TOCOM slash store i appreciate it it helps support this channel and you'll get some cool stuff maybe some gifts out of it i also want to take a second to thank all the members of the channel on youtube I'm always thinking the patreon people but I don't want to forget you guys there's like a hundred and fifty or so people that are supporting the channel on YouTube you can join them and you can get access to exclusive live streams early access to videos and whatnot just like the patreon people do just hit the little join button down below and find out more and if you're scrolling through the comments and somebody has a little like piece of my face next to it a little logo or something like that that's a member so thank them for supporting the channel because they are better than you alright thanks a lot for watching this this is your first time here you might want to check this one out the algorithm and all of its wisdoms things that you might like it there's also other videos are probably being recommended down here got my little face on them I invite you to watch those and if you like them please do subscribe I'll come back with videos every Monday and every Thursday alright that's it for now you guys go out have an eye-opening rest of the week and I'll see you on Monday love you guys sticker

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 276,623

Keywords: answers with joe, random thursday, amygdala, limbic system, triune brain, elon musk, the brain, hypothalamus, thalamus, hippocampus, medulla oblongata, reptilian brain, paleomammalian brain, brain science

Id: zeCoO5U9h1Q

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2019