Have you ever gotten an email that insulted you and prompted you to react immediately? Then, maybe the next hour or day, you realized your interpretation was incorrect, your answer wasn’t appropriate and you ended up making matters worse? We’re again at the center for emotions of the brain, the amygdala. However, this is not a situation threatening your life. …
When your rational self doesn’t get a say
Do you think you can foretell how you would behave in most situations? We like to believe we know ourselves and answer ‘Yes, I know exactly what I would do!’ But sometimes we can be surprised by how wrong our predictions are. The moments we’re most likely to mispredict our actions involve stress, so let’s review what happens in that …
An ancient system
Our brains have evolved over millions of years and over that time, developed mechanisms that helped us survive different challenges. However, the changes we make in the world aren’t accompanied by evolutions in our brains – our technological development happens too quickly for our bodies to catch up! Here I want to mention one example of that. Until not so …
Envying gnus
As mentioned previously, the traits that animals gained through evolution can be messy. Sometimes, they work against each other. Don’t you sometimes envy a gnu? When the gnu cow has her calf, it will be standing and ready to walk within an hour! But our human babies need months until they even attempt to get up. So we applaud when …