1: The Road Less Traveled?

Let’s start here, if the “bomb” didn’t blow you away?

Two things you want to remember from this daily: 1. Low road: 2. High road:

In his book: “Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are” by Joseph E. LeDoux, states that the time required for signals to move along the low road is almost 2x faster than signals to the high road.

In the “A Book Review” by Bobby Matherne ©1997, he states: “In Chapter 6 LeDoux pinpoints the amygdala as the portion of the brain responsible for emotional fear responses.

The sensory signals go from the hypothalamus to the amygdala in 15 milliseconds and from the hypothalamus to the cortex in 25 milliseconds.

As a result, the amygdala is creating emotional responses before the cortex has even received the signal to be processed.

The amygdala has limited pattern recognition capabilities compared to the cortex, however, and performs a quick and dirty pattern recognition and response.

The cortex applies its refined cognitive processes to the same signal and provides the amygdala with signals for a more reasoned approach to the same sensory input.

If we consider the thalamocortical path as the high road and the thalamoamygdalic path as the low road, one is reminded of the old Scottish song, Loch Lomond, which goes:” “Oh, ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.”

While you can criticize this oversimplification, remember those two takeaways because the ground in the figure of VOL/T (Vertical, Oblique, and Lateral) is over TIME.

Time is not on our side in self-awareness… or is it?

Join me for the next idea tomorrow,

Mike