Reptilian Brain

process, which is modulated by the reptilian brain. During occasions of fear, the thinking brain can literally shut down and cause you to react in an entirely automatic, unconscious, and -- all too often, irrational way. The neocortex, the limbic and reptilian brains are interactive and signals travel in all directions. Thoughts originating in the neocortex, become chemicals that engender emotions in the limbic system that manifest as vivid imagery and corresponding "body felt sensations," resulting from chemical signals to the body emanating from the reptilian brain. In a seminal work on the subject, the late Dr. Candace Pert's, "Molecules of Emotion," documents her pioneering research on how the chemicals inside our bodies form a dynamic information network, linking mind and body. Dr. Pert, who was a research professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC., established brilliantly the
Thus, every intense emotion has a physiological counterpart in the body -- a "body felt sensation" that corresponds to an emotional feeling -- giving rise to the so-called "mind/body" paradigm. When you are happy, sad, or calm, you are physiologically very different, and the related body felt sensation varies accordingly. For our purposes, we shall consider that an "emotion" has two parts: 1) vivid imagery that is processed by the limbic system, and 2) an accompanying "body felt sensation" that is engendered by the reptilian brain. Perhaps the simplest example of how this works is to consider a romantic emotion, which conjures up vivid imagery supplied by the limbic system, which is accompanied by unique body felt sensations, courtesy of the reptilian brain. Among other things, numerous biofeedback studies have poignantly demonstrated this connection between the mind and the