Aha, just saw this again, after @DougTataryn's BioEmotive retreat, and my perspective has shifted a bit. There's definitely something real to the triune brain model. Details can be debated but the prefrontal cortex does different stuff than the hippocampus & amygdala! 🧠
Triune brain, hemispheres, and using oversimplified maps
11 tweets · August 2019 · 27 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
When I say "there's something real to the triune brain model" what I'm saying is basically "a 3-part model of intellectual, emotional, physical brain is better than not having those distinctions". Not dissimilar to this remark about hemispheres:
Now my perspective is that when people I know say "S1 & S2", half the time they're talking about their hemispheres, and half the time they're talking about their emotional brain. The actual specific dual-process S1/S2 model is almost never what is meant.
I don't have a coherent integration of McGilchrist's hemisphere model with this other major structure of the brain but I'm working on it.
The various dichotomies such as feelings vs reason are muddled in many ways.
Here's my best one-tweet sketch of the difference between the emotional brain and the right neocortex.
But to the left neocortex, it's all either verbal/coherent or not.
These models I'm presenting are tremendously oversimplified. The map is not the territory. But a sketched map of the territory is better than no map, as long as it doesn't contain grave errors and you don't take it to be more accurate than it is.
The important thing when using a map that isn't *extremely* precise (read: almost all maps) is to keep most of your attention on the actual world, and just refer to the map periodically.
And within this sketch of a model, I'll suggest that if you imagine two hikers hiking together, the left hemisphere is the one staring at the map the whole time and the right hemisphere is the one looking at the world. They need to communicate to navigate effectively.
I've found McGilchrist's model so valuable because it finally helped my left hemisphere identify *what it is* and *what it does*. And therefore also what it isn't, and what it doesn't need to do!