The Ancient Brain

I Googled "Ancient Brain" and got 140,000,000 hits! Well, let me simplify! Minutes after my youngest daughter was born, I stood next to the attending physician looking at this tiny, new human. He remarked that she was a healthy, normal baby girl. Realizing he had not yet had time to do a thorough examination, I wondered, aloud, "How can you tell?"

He said several things which I no longer recall, but I do remember his demonstration: "Normally babies are born with a fear of falling", he explained. To illustrate, he reached under the bottom of the crib and gave her little 'mattress' a good thump. She flailed her tiny arms as though grasping for something to hold onto.

Aha! The ancient brain! I liken it to when you buy a new computer with some software already installed. That is my definition of "the ancient brain"; knowledge that comes already installed in the new brain. The rest of the brain is just blank, like an empty computer hard drive, waiting to be loaded with things you will subsequently learn. I think of that part as 'The Conditioned Brain' (my label, that one got 1,710,000 hits!). You will learn many things during your lifetime, but you did not have to learn what is stored in the 'ancient brain'.

For the most part, that inherent knowledge has to do with the preservation of life and the propagation of the species. But the preservation of the life of the individual is important only so far as it supports the propagation of the species.

Air space at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range, is restricted for air traffic to infinite altitude. At the range this spring, I was therefore surprised to see a contrail of a large jet aircraft flying directly overhead. I asked a maintenance employee of the range how that aircraft had permission to fly in this restricted airspace. She replied that the range "has dibs" on the airspace, meaning that the range commander could, at her discretion alone, suddenly call a halt to overhead flights, as when they were planning to launch a missile. In the 'ancient brain', the species 'has dibs' over the individual!

What is truly amazing, is that this seems true of species that are thought to have no brain. Like plants. A 'stalk' of wheat produces a head with many grains. When these grains are mature, they fall to the ground where some, at least, may take root and grow more wheat. Same with a stalk of corn. It may produce several ears of seeds, each with hundreds of grains. Once those seeds fall to the ground, the stalk of corn, or of wheat, shrivels and dies. The future members of the species have 'dibs' on life.

Propagation of the species, in my unlearned opinion, is what creates sex drive. Why does a male fish hover above an egg-laying female, spraying his semen into the water, fertilizing her eggs? There is no apparent reward for him. (Apparent? Maybe it makes him feel very good!) Gotta be that ancient brain at work.

At this point, if my Cognitive Scientist, University Professor son is reading this, he is surely pulling his hair. But that is unlikely, since his time is required for reading loftier writings. We can hope his hair is safe. You and I may, meanwhile, assume that I have reduced 140,000,000 complex explanations into one we all can grasp.

You're welcome!