Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
attacking and eliminating the danger. Freezing means just acting as if
you are dead, a very effective way to neutralize an aggressive environ-
ment. Fleeing means running as fast as you can to try to beat the
danger. The female basic brain has two other basic options, sometimes
summarized as
Sharing means that females have the
tendency to start communicating to collectively counter the problem.
Caring means strongly focusing on the environment, taking care that
everybody is all right. We have to realize that each of these patterns
once belonged to the best practices of safety management. The gender
distinction probably has to do with the different roles in the past:
Females caring for a lot of children had to make a collective plan for
themselves and their social environment in case of a threat, whereas
males experienced their most stressful moments while hunting.
“
share and care.
”
The basic brain is also involved in a final check of our behavior just
before we actually execute it. It has the possibility to block this behav-
ior in cases where something might go wrong. In terms of risk manage-
ment, the basic brain gives very basic and hardly conscious cues that
something is not right. We can feel uncomfortable and just have a
vague idea of why. Although the basic brain works on a nonconscious
level, it can be trained to focus on certain objects or situations. All fear
conditioning for hazardous objects starts here. The lesson to be learned
from this section is that influencing these nonconscious processes can
enhance safety management. In Chapter 3, we will discuss ways to
become more sensitive to dangerous stimuli.
The basic brain has no direct access to our conscious system and influ-
ences us via indirect cues like a feeling of unrest or a strange feeling in
our guts.
Last but not least, we have to realize that the basic brain operates
in direct contact with the actual here and now situation. In the most
recent part of the evolution, man has become the best planner of all
animals, but we still have biases in our system due to the overapprecia-
tion of the actual situation. Kahneman (2011) talks about the
“
what
you see is all there is
bias. When we need to act safely, we sometimes
neglect the bigger picture and base our action on the actual stimuli.
”
Summarizing, the basic brain is the first support for acting safely.
It works fully on a nonconscious level and prescans the world for
