Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
without knowing why. We will explore this point later in Chapter 5,
when we discuss the safety intuition. General feelings like pain, happiness,
unrest, or panic originate in this system. The impact of the negative
impulses is larger then the positive ones. The evolutionary rule is that it is
easier to recover from a false alarm than from an unexpected threat. Pain
is the first signal that something is going wrong. The basic brain has
developed a pain system with separate information channels. This system
starts with pain sensors in the skin that send signals via the spine to the
brain. This pain system is very complex and is still not fully understood.
It is slower then the other senses, like touch or temperature. So we first
feel that something is very hot, and a half second later, we experience the
pain that is involved with burned skin. This probably has to do with the
original fleeing behavior: Run first, check the damage later. We may feel
pain, but we don
t know yet how damaging the situation is. If a knife
touches a finger, we first have to look to determine if the finger is really
hurt. If we actually have a wound, the pain signal slowly becomes stron-
ger, just to take care that we allow the wound to recover.
'
Pain signals are the most original signs of external threats.
Negative pain feeling might be a sign of a life-threatening event; we
never have a negative pain feeling when the system experiences some-
thing positive (for example, tasty food). To survive, we have learned to
focus first on the negative and then to try to avoid this. This principle
developed in what we call
which will also be discussed
in Chapter 5. We can recognize this principle very clearly when we
have an appraisal talk with our boss. If he mentions five positive
points and one negative point, we will probably give more attention to
the negative point than the five positive points, even if this is intro-
duced as a point for approval.
“
loss aversion,
”
First avoid the negative, than experience the positive: the origin of loss
aversion
All brain parts usually work together, but in the case of real danger,
the basic brain has the opportunity to act solely. This acting is primi-
tive and impulsive. The male basic brain has three options, usually
referred to as the three Fs: fight, freeze, and flight. Fighting means
