When you are young, your lizard brain wants to warn you, but it has no data. The best it can do is run around, waving its arms chanting, ‘Danger, Will Robinson, danger!’
As you get older, the lizard brain compiles experiences. It gains extensive files it can flip through to find a situation just like the one in question: things that happened to you, things that happened to friends or family, things you read about that sound plausible.
My lizard brain can now cite chapter and verse, telling exactly me when and where this was a bad idea. ‘Convinced yet? I have five more slides if you’re not.’
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OTOH, Google tells me the whole idea of a lizard brain is incorrect, “(The) triune brain theory is completely wrong – and neuroscientists have known it’s wrong for decades.” You Don’t Have a Lizard Brain by Daniel Toker
Still, it makes a good metaphor. As a title, “My Basal Ganglia Has Power Point” doesn’t sing, does it?
OTOHx2, Wiki concurs that the concept is erroneous but still useful. “While technically inaccurate in many respects as an explanation for brain activity, it remains one of very few approximations of the truth we have to work with.” Wiki: Triune brain
Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott
Virtual Brush Box 