learnings

  4. Our brain on ROAD RAGE Why road rage? Well it is the most common behaviour among us. Abusing, yelling, being fined are common and we blame it on bad drivers, bad roads and traffic. Just a minute. Our brains are built to overreact to a perceived threat. The same neuronal machinery that protected our ancestors from a charging animal eons ago is activated when we encounter ordinary stresses like traffic! Our body releases cortisol, a hormone which sets off the brain’s alarm bells by stimulating the emotionally charged amygdala while damaging neurons in the hippocampus, which in turn shrinks the calming part of the brain that puts things in perspective. To bring this stress response under control we can take the help of our newer brain i.e. the frontal cortex to regulate the older ones. Another common example is, nearly everyone has an involuntary reaction to a stressful situation like public speaking. We feel our stomach churning, our mouths going dry because that’s how evolution...

Our brain is  about 1300 grams in weight and has a 100 billion neurons sloshing around. This amazing organ has been evolving for millions of years which is similar to scoops of ice cream being added to a cone. The lowest part of the brain(thalamus and cerebellum) is similar to that of a lizard’s.It hasn’t evolved much. It handles the survival –oriented behaviour like hunger and sex. The middle part of the brain is involved in emotional processing. This part of the brain ( hippocampus and amygdala) is similar to that of the mice’s which is much more evolved than that of a lizard’s. The third and the newest part of the brain which is also the largest is the complex cortex and is the home to our thoughts and language. The evolution of our brain can be compared to this example.If someone asked you to construct a racing boat but they gave you a wooden rowboat and said you could add things to it to make it into a racing boat!  That’s what our brain evolution has been.We can’t cha...