TWO
EMOTION IN EVOLUTION
In 1998 a one-page scientific article1 stated that the emotional state of a pregnant animal entered as a determinant in the form, structure, and functioning of the brain forming in the embryo-fetus-infant in her womb. If the mother herself is given a safe, protective environment, free of anxiety and threat (or, if she can create and maintain such state within herself, as humans can), her infant will be born with an enlarged fore-brain and a reduced hind-brain. If the expectant mother feels in a harsh, unsafe, anxiety-ridden, or threatening environment, her infant will be born with a reduced fore-brain, larger hind-brain, and a larger skeletal structure and muscular mass.
Although the item received little attention at the time, the significance of it cannot be overstated, since it gives a major clue to the rising tide of violence threatening our culture and world. While supportive research has steadily appeared from several different sources over the past decade, for it to be fully comprehended and appreciated here, we need an explanation of “hind” and “fore” brains. This, in turn, calls for a brief review of infant brain growth in general, as surveyed in the previous chapter.
The “hind” or “reptilian” brain refers to the earliest neural structure developed in evolutionary history. It was carried over by Nature as the foundation of all mammalian brains, where it forms and grows in the first trimester of pregnancy in humans. The primary purpose of this hind-brain is to respond to its environment, and survive in it—both procedures being complex and lengthy. In turn, this hind-brain is the foundation of our far more advanced “fore-brain,” with its old and new “mammalian” brains growing in the second and third trimesters leading to birth.
Following birth we have what is now called the “fourth trimester,” bringing the growth of a fourth brain, the prefrontal cortex. This prefrontal cortex opens us, step by step, to vastly greater and more powerful vistas of human destiny. At the same time it is, as Allan Schore makes clear, both more fragile and difficult to establish than any other neural systems, and takes much longer to develop. If successfully developed, however, this prefrontal system is far more powerful than all the rest of our body-brain put together.
The Form and Content of Genetic Blueprints
Our genetic system, which guides the cellular construction of our body-brain, is just a blueprint, or outline sketch for such a building project; the content needed to actualize, “realize,” or fill in this plan must come from the environment in which this new life is forming. Such environments or “matrices” for this new life unfold in the same sequence as the brain systems they serve: first matrix is our mother’s womb, then her arms and breast, then family, society, on to our great mother Earth herself.
Nature’s form or “outline” for this growth is given within, while its needed content is given from without. This stability of form, and open flexibility for content, leads to our eventual ability to explore almost any conceivable environment, build a “structure of knowledge” or the neural patterns of that environment, and adapt to it through such neural patterns.
A fertilized egg in a womb (holding the given DNA-RNA blueprint for new life) is thus extremely sensitive to the environment given it through both womb and then “mother and breasts,” family and so on. These environments hold the content to be selected out as resonant with DNA’s pattern in its ongoing growth, and determine the emotional state (or relational ability) to which the development is subject. This sensitive “outline-building guide” determines and follows the sequential stages of growth from hind- to fore-brain, sketched in above. Such growth involves a bewildering complex of cross-indexing of these form-content intricacies.
An ironic double snag appears early on, however. Our first line of defense—the reptilian or hind-brain—can be finally completed and able to function as a balanced part of a coherent, intelligent system such as ours, only as integrated into and transformed by our higher fore-brain; this is a matter of matching resonances (as pointed out previously, that reptilian system is then lifted into the lofty realm of far more advanced systems than black-snake in our woodpile). But this fore-brain must have the hind-brain as its firm foundation needed to establish that forebrain itself. A potential double-bind of serious significance shapes up, while yet giving us a splendid example of the “strange loop mirroring” imperative to all growth.
Nature, in her intelligence, prefers to build her most important house of intellect-intelligence (our later-appearing neural systems) on a rock, not on sand. And while that ancient reptilian brain is a sturdy rock indeed, it must have sufficient nurturing and care to develop its rock-like character. Such care brings positive emotional hormones, which this firm foundation must have in utero, and even more as this foundational brain begins to function after birth.
Since that reptilian hind-brain is the first to grow and develop, it is the first that is ready to go to work at birth to further its development as this foundation, all depending on the emotional states involved. Those hormones arising from nurturing and care are determined, of course, by the mother, in all cases.
Being flooded with negative hormones at any part of this initial foundation registers on the new infant as tantamount to abandonment, and can compromise and seriously warp that first formation, as well as the subsequent ones following birth, which are equally dependent on this primary formation.
So this ancient and stable primary hind-brain must itself be nurtured, provided with positive emotional molecules, and established well enough to be the foundation for the second, “old mammalian brain,” which itself must be developed enough to integrate this primary hindbrain into its second system—which must have the first as its foundation. Further, such integration by the second brain is necessary to the completion of the first, primary brain on which the second brain depends. This “don’t go near the water until you can swim” stipulation is truly a bewildering looping back and forth, but is a clear example of the strange loop effect underlying our growth, and clearly shows why nurturing from the beginning of life is so critical.
The second, emotional-relational (old mammalian) brain begins its initial growth even as the first sensory-motor system is completing its growth. This critical overlapping period is for just such interaction-integration between reptilian and mammalian, as needed by this sequential series of interdependent building blocks. And this mutually dependent overlapping will continue throughout development, the entire fabric dependent on the appropriate emotional support (see developmental stages in figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1. Brain development—Growth spurts and shifts in concentration
Candace Pert and Wrinkles in our Genetic Plans
Since the mother’s emotional state determines the environment the DNA must selectively prepare for, in a negative emotional environment adaptation selects for a stronger, larger, and more efficient survival-defensive (hind) brain and a larger body and muscle mass to go with it. Nature senses she must “armor” this new life against any inherent danger coming up in its new world.
The reverse is also true, of course. In a positive environment given by an emotionally secure mother, nature “selects” toward a stronger fore-brain and intelligence, and puts less investment in that hind-brain and its corresponding larger skeletal frame and muscular mass.
Evolution’s original intent is not to equip us humans to wrestle with “Saber Tooth,” but to outwit him, and she gives, or tries to give us the neural tools to do just that, which is the story of human development and the role of nurturing.
Candace Pert’s early work, The Molecules of Emotion, clearly shows that emotion is not some wispy, nonsubstantial imagination of a neurotic mind, but a powerful hormonal element affecting, directly or indirectly, every facet of body-brain, from our immune system to the highest capacities of mind.2
Nature also designed our human gene to unfold, as common sense would dictate, in an appropriate sequence and balance of all potential systems contained in our heritage. (The nursing infant hardly needs a full set of chompers, which dutifully wait until called for.) This appropriate sequencing should give a balanced and coherent neural structure leading to lifelong development, learning, and creation. But when survival needs dominate the mother (indicated by emotional stress, anxiety, worry, and tension), balance is put on hold and a necessarily smaller percentage of that “building material” will be allotted to this later-forming fore-brain, with more going to the earlier defensive hind-brain.
Were this compensation to be carried out in all areas of development, it would neatly turn evolution upside down.
Survival is always Nature’s primary concern, and concentrating her major attention on that first line of defense, all “higher” possibilities are, by comparison, “luxuries” to be afforded only after that home base of survival is secured. This is only common sense. You can’t build much of a fragile neural superstructure on a weak, insubstantial foundation (again, as indicated in figure 1.3). And we need to dwell on these overlaps until some clarity regarding the entire complex is grasped. Such looping back and leaping forward can help us to establish the needed clarity.
So even before the reptilian brain is completed, the second or “old mammalian” brain begins its unfolding in the second trimester. Such unfolding establishes the foundation for further growth by a looping back of this second onto the first brain system. This happens automatically, since the second brain is built squarely on and around the first, and dependent on it structurally. Through interaction of the two, this higher intelligence will integrate enough of the older or lower into its development to simultaneously develop the older sufficiently that such integration can take place—again, a matter of resonance wherein both are “lifted up” into a new order of functioning.
Neuroscientist Paul MacLean points out that our brain functions through resonance, not objective matching or combining of content. Resonance is an underlying pervasive quality bringing a felt-relationship or feeling-tone of similarity, as of a shared origin, purpose, goal, or intent. Such resonance transforms the older system, which can then provide the materials for the higher or newer system to complete its unfolding. This unfolding is a matter of matching resonances. Such matching will, in turn, complete each system in its link of the sequential unfolding, and bring an ever-enlarging and strengthening of each, as foundation for the next. All of this establishes the hind-brain as the strong foundation needed for development of the whole sequence, even as the “looping” involved is repeated in all growth periods to come.
Emphasis on that fore-brain and the prefrontal cortex it gives rise to, if sequentially nurtured and developed, brings, we might say, that mythical Peaceable Kingdom, which artist Edward Hicks depicted in 1846, wherein lion and lamb lie down together, the hind-brain taking the “hindmost,” the fore-brain the “foremost,” as nature intended. But interfered with by negative hormones from any source, the reverse too often occurs, wherein that hind-brain is emphasized, dominant, and foremost (as a negative culture eventually ensures). Therein lion simply gobbles up lamb, a common survival-of-the-fittest response applauded by all (except the lamb) and awarded the winnings. And (to touch briefly on the nature of a negative culture as currently suffered) don’t blame Nature, Darwin, DNA, or gremlins from flying saucers. Blame the structures of corporate management; the AMA’s birthing atrocities breaking up Nature’s elaborate bonding; schooling’s induced madness; the dozens of mercury-laden vaccinations a new child must undergo (the worst aspects of “science-says” superstitions)—on and on, as found in the lion’s ever-present cultural guise.
So all such destinies for that new life depend to an indeterminable and varying extent on the mother’s emotional state and the care and nurturing of her infant. Her emotional state in the last stage of pregnancy determines not only the successful completion of the fore-brain, but the rudiments of the prefrontal cortex, which begins its growth in that same period shortly before birth. This last-appearing evolutionary structure (the prefrontal cortex) can, however, only be completed after birth, for, were that structure completed in utero, we would never get out of there, so huge will evolution’s latest neural system in our head grow. And herein the plot thickens.
The full growth of the prefrontal cortex, which can occur only after birth, takes all of nine months to be completed, and is the most emotionally dependent of all neural systems, radically dependent on the nurturing matrix of mother’s arms and breast. Denied this matrix, the prefrontal cortex will be compromised even in its basic cellular growth, and even more so in its function. And the equally critical nature of the development designed to follow—the “toddler period”—is yet again almost totally dependent on the emotional state of mother (or some stable, nurturing surrogate).
What takes place in this last part of the “in-arms” period, overlapping into the toddler period, is the only way all parts of the brain can be integrated into a workable unit. This unit determines the general brain growth for at least the first three to four years of life, and, as Allan Schore points out, heavily influences emotional life, immune system and general health, and intelligence itself throughout life.3
Eons were spent developing higher life systems, all of which depended on a well-developed survival system. Even microbes have an “avoidance maneuver” for survival. And the more developed a system, the more developed that survival portion of brain on which such system rests.
The Critical Question
We can say, in a rather dramatic metaphorical way, that at every human conception Nature asks the question: “Will we be able to move toward our higher evolutionary intelligence and possibilities within this newly forming life, or must we defend ourselves again?” The answer in all cases centers on the emotional states involved. Pert’s molecules of emotion pack a wallop.
As we shall see in subsequent chapters, such higher evolutionary thrust includes by default the makings of an eventual matrix-for-mind beyond body-brain, the not-to-be forgotten Holy Grail of our evolution, somewhere to go when the lights go out. . . .
Exploring the Prefrontal Cortex
Consider these first three largely independent neural systems—reptilian hind-brain, old-mammalian emotional brain, new mammalian brain with its rudimentary thinking-speaking—each spontaneously responding according to established evolutionary patterns.
At first, lacking any unified, coordinated function, Nature’s next undertaking is to coordinate these separate and independent systems into a singular neural network, which, as we will see, has the potential to come under the guidance of heart’s intelligence. And for this critical task she begins construction of an even more advanced brain that can coordinate all three into a single, smoothly functioning and superior intelligence. This “great coordinator” and upcoming governor is, of course, that aforementioned prefrontal cortex, evolution’s latest achievement. So equipped, the infant and then toddler is ready to “map its new world” from that moment of birth until maturation, when this new brain will reign as “governor” of the whole show, and do remarkable things with it.
Pert’s Molecules Again
Throughout this coordinating period the mother’s emotional state, determining to a large extent the infant’s corresponding state in utero, even more heavily influences the growth of this prefrontal cortex from its beginning through to its completion around the ninth month after birth. This particular genetic group, for this most advanced of all neural structures is the most sensitive to negative hormonal influence of all neural systems. And how Nature’s overarching question will be answered, as to which direction this new life will take—toward defense or higher dimensions—will depend on both mother’s and infant’s emotional states in the womb and beyond.
While birth, and the nurturing that should follow thereafter, is the most critical event of all our life stages, and is generally a major disaster beyond exaggeration, it is also far too large and critical an issue to go into here. The subject has been copiously covered in my previous books and many others, and indeed requires a book to even begin to describe; such descriptions many of us keep offering as prescriptions for sanity, but so far to little or no avail, culture being the power it is. Suffice here to say that abandonment in any of its myriad forms is the greatest and most damaging fear a human infant-child can undergo, and deprivation of nurturing and care is equivalent to major abandonment.
At any rate, such infant sensitivity increases as the neural mass of that prefrontal cortex unfolds and expands after birth, while the same general disaster brought about by birthing lurks behind the scenes thereafter, manifesting in the series of developmental stages that follow.
This neural governor, the prefrontal cortex, will take all of nine months to be sketched in enough for preliminary functions, although its full development and employment will be years down the line. Meanwhile the mother’s and her newborn’s and eventual infant’s emotional states will enter as major factors in the full building and functioning of this “neural governor.” If all systems are in a positive emotional state, the structure will be complete enough for preliminary employment by the end of that nine-month period after birth.
At which nine-month milestone Nature responds with another and even more critical structure called the orbito-frontal loop, of which importance we cannot overstate. First, consider that from the moment of birth the sensory-motor functions of the infant will have begun that ongoing and lifelong world-mapping as designed (what Piaget called “structures of knowledge”), wherein Nature’s multitasking goes into high gear. Two major construction jobs at the same time occupy this first year of life: building the prefrontal cortex, while busily employing the old reptilian brain in its sensory-motor construction of a world-knowledge, which is built only as we interact with that world.
Enter the Orbito-Frontal Loop
At this nine-month point of after-birth growth, all these disparate neural systems must be integrated and brought into a single responsive unit under the command-guidance of that prefrontal cortex, evolved for just this purpose. Without some unification and overall neural guidance we would consist of a mix of blind reptilian instinctive reactions, the unbridled responses of a four-legged creature in the jungle or forest, and/or the unruly, half-baked behavior of an immature, half-brained idiot. Quite a potpourri and not a very attractive prospect. (The reader can probably think of his or her own living examples of each category above, or in such unhappy aggregates of them as found in nearly any politician or even some kin, or—God forbid—perhaps even one’s self!)
The prefrontal cortex apparently signals all three units of this budding brain (reptilian, old and new mammalian); these units send branching neural structures (large quantities of neurons, dendrites, axons and such) out to that area where all three brains are in closest proximity with that prefrontal cortex, an area immediately behind and adjacent to the orbits of the eyes. There those neural extensions (axons, dendrites, and the like) from each brain mesh, and begin a large scale neural “looping together,” which will link them all into an integrated, functional unit under the direct “governance” of the prefrontal cortex, as Nature designed.
Enter the Fate of the Orbito-Frontal Loop
This meshing, which creates the orbito-frontal loop, is a very large neural organization, almost a small “brain” in its own right, bringing together and linking into a unit of all these evolutionary neural structures. This ties them into functional resonance with the prefrontal cortex, wherein the prefrontal cortex can integrate all into a powerful, unified response.
Our capacity to focus on, consciously attend, and concentrate all energies on a particular event or possibility, lies within this integration. This will in turn integrate that ancient instinctive sensory-motor system (the hind-brain) into service of the higher intelligences of the later evolutionary brains. And then all can be integrated into service of this governing prefrontal cortex and—as we shall see—its connections with the heart. At such developmental point, Nature’s perennial question of which way this new life will go seems to be answered in the affirmative.
Construction of this high point of evolution’s venture, the orbito-frontal loop, takes a full three months after completion of the far larger prefrontal cortex (which took nine months itself). Statistically this new loop is completed around the twelfth month after birth, though the actual time frame is quite variable. At this point the infant, under the guidance of its old-mammalian brain, having risen from its reptilian on-the-belly wiggling about into its mammalian crawling about—and now under the guidance of this higher brain—moves into a fully upright, two-legged human stance and becomes one of us.
Wherein that excited toddler, with all its resources under at least some control, is ready to charge out into this brave-new-world and explore every tiny nook and cranny in it. Through taste, touch, feel, smell, listening to, communicating, resonating, and identifying with, the toddler builds those critical “structures of knowledge” on which his future depends.
On entrance of this toddling-ball of energy, curiosity, and ceaseless movement, it looks as though Nature’s great question will be answered in the affirmative after all—that child’s spirit soaring in high excitement as it reaches out to embrace and absorb its new environment. In my family we referred to this as the “OOOH—AAAH” period of child-enchantment and constant pointing-toward in surprise and delight over its new world unfolding. Which, my friend David Tetrault points out, should be our lifelong state of “living in constant astonishment” at the wonders unfolding.