So what does it mean to be, to no longer be, who you were? One might say than an individual's personality was changed. Could that be? You recognize the person, but the person is different. And so we might conclude that the person's personality has changed. What does that mean, personality has changed? I've taught courses for years on personality. I still can't define it very well. I have one definition that kind of works for me, but what does it mean that you are no longer you? It implies that one's personality has changed. So does it mean that the personality is located in the frontal lobe? Well, that's kind of food for thought, isn't it? Personality is located in the frontal lobe. Well, in part, but as I say here, it's a good deal more complicated than that. Because the temporal lobe does not reside independent of the rest of what happens in the brain, and particularly what happens in the body. Okay, here are the functions commonly attributed to the frontal lobes. Planning. All the people we talked about, including Mervin, had a difficult time planning. Now what does planning involve? It involves looking ahead, envisioning various options, laying it out, maybe step by step. Seeing this plan in your mind, see this plan is going to work or maybe this plan is going to work. But I think that planning has something to do with something that we rarely think about and I want us to think about. When I planned this lecture, and I've been planning it for a couple of days now, I worried about it for a while now. Then I started planning about it, planning for it. It's a lecture I don't think I've ever given before because it sort of, I've gotten pieces here and pieces there. And then I noticed that as I get the script kind of together. I imagine me, get this. Giving this lecture to you. And the truth is, you weren't here. In my mind, you were here. And when I got to a certain point and I looked at your faces and your faces weren't even here, I changed the lecture. I modified the lecture because you were frowning. Because some of you were asleep and some of you were texting. So I'm thinking, God, this is not working. So I modified it, to whatever it's going to turn out to be. Now, and even now in my mind, I'm modifying it because I'm here now, and you're here now, and I look in your faces. And from your faces I'm judging whether or not this is working. But when we plan, get this. When you plan to do something and you have options to go to meet this so and so or another group, and you want to go to a movie, or a friend of yours saying, well, there's a play that I'd really love for you to come to see. It's a live thing. It's not on film. You're going to enjoy it. And you've never really seen a live performance in your ten years at Rutgers. I mean, not ten years, one year, or whatever. So you imagine. You imagine, a habit you don't even work on, you imagine being with your friends, going to a movie, or with this other person to see a live performance or staying home and studying. And as you're doing this, as you're looking at that image of yourself. You're also feeling what it would be like, and your decision in many instances will be heavily influenced by a shift in feelings. Going to the live performance with somebody you barely know? [SOUND] Maybe next time. It makes me a little anxious. I don't know what we're going to talk about etc., etc. But all right, so all that sort of goes In your mind as you have this perception of yourself in the future. And that has to do with planning. So feelings are heavily involved in planning, frequently without you even knowing it. Fascinating the way we are constructed. Frontal lobes are involved in organizing, problem solving, decision making. I just gave you a fictitious example of decision making, should I do this or that? Controlling behavior and emotions. And I suspect that frontal lobes are critically involved in creating and evaluating images of ourselves in the future. I just gave an example of that. Creating and evaluating images of ourselves in the future, and making decisions based on what we see. And how we feel when we see what we see. You've heard people say we can't talk about this issue. It's too emotional. The general sense is that emotions Interfere with thinking. Emotions interfere with thinking. I would like to modify that. It's true at some point. You have an emotionally tense argument with somebody and pretty soon neither one of you are making any sense. But in the course of daily life, we rely on our emotions as guides. They guide us. Now, I'm not saying you should always do what your feelings tell you to do. It's a balance between feelings and thinking. You might feel like doing something, but your frontal lobe in particular is involved in inhibiting feelings that would be destructive to you and perhaps other people. I suspect drinking. Has an effect on the frontal lobe because those of you who imbibe from time to time will notice that you tend to do things that feel right at the time and really stupid when you're sober. All right. So, you need to maintain a balance between thinking and feeling. Okay. There's the frontal lobe. And primary culprits in the difficulties experienced by Phineas, Eliot, and Marvin. And again, should we then conclude the frontal lobe constitutes the seat of personality? This is a complicated slide. You can download it, you don't have to memorize it. I hate slides that have so many words on it. But what it says in words is what I'm trying to convey so far. And that is the brain constitutes just a portion of the central nervous system. It's a very important part of the central nervous system. But the central nervous system, per se, goes right down into the body, with the brain being up there as a bulb. And it sends impulses into the body and it's processed in the body instantaneously and sends impulses up to the brain. And assists us in making decisions and assists us in acting, staying in place or fleeing, a number of other things that I'll take up in a few moments. But there's constant interaction between the brain and the body. And the interchange is carried by various molecules instantaneously, and in some instances, right up through the central nervous system itself. So, one of the main messages of this lecture is I propose that the body plays and the body, I mean the internal part of our biological system. Plays a much greater role in decision making by way of generating feelings than is recognized by most neuroscientists and most cognitive scientists. My sense is if people are willing, we're going to take a look at this and turn it. And really smart people, smarter than me, turn our attention to this issue and look at the two-way stream of information. We will make all of a sudden great progress in understanding not only us, but mammalians and how we make decisions about what to do. I will argue, and I think this is relatively new, that we are concerned about survival at two levels. Survival at two levels. First of all, there's physical survival. Darwin made a breakthrough in terms of evolution and what is required for an organism to physically survive. That's the most basic thing for a species, is to survive long enough to propagate. And we have been carved and shaved and gotten in various directions, through lots of variability. Some of variability that is expressed through the activity of genes is incredibly successful. Other variability just simply doesn't work, and the creatures that are carriers of that variability that doesn't work, they're not going to propagate. That's Darwin made super simple. At the most primitive level, physical survival is taking care of by the reptilian and the paleomammalian brain. I'm going to go over what these are in just a moment. This is like a review. These have been brought to your attention before, with MacLean's triune brain. MacLean's triune brain and I'll review that in just a moment. And the other survival need, Probably for human beings only, is psychological survival. Nature's pretty much handled. Physical survival. It's done its very best to enable you to survive probably to a relatively old age. You have plenty of opportunities to have offspring. And then you're not basically useless after that. You can, if you still stand up and talk, you can take my job. But, that's the main thing here and nature has pretty much taken care of all that. But, we have the cognitive equipment and we're thrown into a social world that we concentrate on our psychological survival. Psychological survival. How do I survive in a group of other people? How do I survive at an early age in my family? What I need to do? What do I need to be? What skills do I have to have? How clever do I have to be, to survive in a context of my family? We've got to figure that out. Then you go to school. What do I have to do? You're not constantly thinking about this, but it comes up, doesn't it? To become a member of that group. Now that group of cheerleaders. Everybody loves them. They adore them. How come they won't let me on the team? How can I avoid being abused? What do I have to do? How do I have to be to survive? We're talking psychological survival. Talk about being liked. What do I have to do be liked, or respected, or loved? I hope you're understanding what I mean. This is not terribly abstract stuff. Make it personally meaningful to you and then you'll get what I am talking about. In the future, what do I have to be? What do I have to know in order to get a job, in order to be respected in my job? The pressure can be relatively constant, and we're talking about Not only physical survival, but primarily, psychological survival. Elliot, Marvin, Gage, they weren't doing well in the arena of psychological survival. They couldn't make decisions. They couldn't make choices. They were unable to have the kind of guides that you and I have because they lost touch with their feelings. Psychological survival is largely in the hands of the cerebral cortex, especially the frontal lobe, and it's interactions with feelings and emotions that emerge from the body. I'm not happy with any of these, but. Right here, this is the reptilian brain, right there is the reptilian brain in the pink. All mammalians have that, their version of that. It's usually the same kind of structure, different sizes and that's the reptilian brain. That keeps us alive. That keeps the heart pumping and us breathing. It's probably also involved in for animals, birds for example in nesting behavior. Other mammalian with breeding, nesting, taking care of their territories, that's the limbic system. And the limbic system is involved in feelings, limbic system has to do with emotions. So I'm saying that the reptilian brain and the paleomammalian brain are involved in and critically are essential to survival of one's life. Physical survival. They operate with rules that we don't even know about. They happen automatically. There's an automaticity to the processes that they kick off. And how they regulate various aspects of living, including how we, they respond to internal MOU. Of the body. The cerebral cortex or neomammalian brain is unique to mammals. What's unique to human beings Is the frontal lobe. Our frontal lobe takes up more percentage of the brain than far more than any of our closest relatives. And I'm saying that is responsible for psychological survival. So that just reviews what I said. You have it in your notes, you should. These slides are accessible online. I just want you to make clear, be sure you understand the difference between the reptilian brain. Controls life functions, balance, breathing, heart rate, territorial dominance, and ritual displays. Paleomammalian brain, also called the Limbic System, or sometimes is called the midbrain. It's too bad that they keep on switching these things around. It's involved in learning and memory at a most primitive level. Emotion, approach and avoidance, feeding, and reproductive behavior. I can't stress enough the automaticity of how this operates. For example, there is a rat in an alley way and it's damp alley way. And there's a trash barrel and there's a. Something is leaking into it, drip, drip, drip. And it's a humid evening and it's foraging for food. And then, all of a sudden, a cat comes into the alley, okay? The rat, before it even sees the cat, it freezes and gives out a high squeal. And then sees the cat. Now, how's that for fast? Before it actually sees the cat, nerves are triggered, the optical cord that goes back to the visual system is also bypassed and goes through the thalamus, I think. Goes straight to the body and sets the body, gets the body ready for whatever might happen next. Then it sees, then the information gets back to the visual system. Now that's fast, and that's how we're wired. Normally rats, but that's how it worked. You're driving down the road and somebody's coming barreling towards you on the opposite direction and you catch a glimpse of them and automatically you turn it off and you put on the brake. And after that you're scared. As you're doing, it's automatic and that's how we're wired, to survive. Automatic.
