Is lizard brain consciousness real?

April 12, 2009 12:38 PM

Can human beings achieve a 'lizard brain consciousness? Is it scientifically documented? What techniques can one use to access this.

I've have heard anecdotally in martial arts circles and from hippies about people achieving a lizard consciousness. They think that it's accessing the 'hindbrain' or reptilian parts of the human brain.

Is this documented in any way as some meditation stuff is - like scans showing that mainly this part of the brain is active or whatever?

Do any medications or psychoactive drugs have this effect? (for interest only, I don't eat that kind of thing)

Are there any techniques one can use to do it that I can try?

posted by Not Supplied to grab bag (17 comments total)

Most of the people that believe this take copious amounts of drugs, which don't "unlock" anything but enable them to believe that such things are occurring.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 12:42 PM on April 12

No advice on how to "access" it, but this reminds me of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which is a fascinating bit of pseudo-science.
posted by stopgap at 12:51 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

The most popular trip report that I know of along these lines is Electric Cough-Syrup Acid Test by Jim Hogshire. It made it all the way to Harper's, so a lot of people who just know drugs+reptile and not much more may have read that.
posted by jessamyn at 12:59 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

The 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness is a related bit of nonsense.
posted by phrontist at 1:09 PM on April 12

This reminds me of a medical program I saw that showed a segment regarding a man who had sustained a head injury. He was fully conscious but was described by doctors as having use only of his "reptilian brain." He spit, hissed, and attempted to attack the doctors and nurses while strapped to a gurney. When he recovered he had no memory of his behavior. Not sure if this is what you are referring to, however
posted by Piscean at 1:20 PM on April 12

When I hear people talk about this, I usually get the impression that they're mystifying the feeling of being "in the zone". One's inner monologue and concious decision making are shut down, and instead you're completely engrossed in running/fighting/playing with no self-analysis or external thoughts.

I can get this when I'm running long distances or especially when juggling a challenging but steady pattern. They both demand all of my attention and involve a steady rhythm; neither of them involve any analysis or other thoughts that can usefully be expressed as words. After a while doing this, I slip into a state in which I'm only aware of the running/juggling; as far as I can remember there are no properly formed thoughts involved until I come out of it.

I do find that this state makes my juggling dramatically better. My throwing improves a little, but my catching and awareness of the overall pattern seem to improve markedly. If you could find a way to get into this state when playing a sport, I'd be willing to believe that it helps to improve focus and thus noticeably improve the speed and accuracy of your reactions.

I'm not aware of research into this, but it feels a lot like a light trance state: you're relaxed and mentally passive while focusing all your attention on one thing. So if you can't experience it by settling into a long run, try (self-)hypnosis? This might point down an avenue of research as well - I don't have a link handy, but there must be plenty or research available on the neuroscience of trances.
posted by metaBugs at 1:36 PM on April 12

Gurdjieff, the Eastern mystic, talked about the mind in terms of the Shepherd (rationality), the Sheep (emotionality), and the Wolf (lust, fury, etc.) In his view, people were usually in the "sheep" or "wolf" state and had to learn to awaken into the "shepherd" state. Arthur Koestler, talked about the Knight, sitting on a Horse, which was standing on a Crocodile. His point were that all three "minds" (rational, emotional, "reptilian") were concurrently active, but we were only aware of the rational mind: e.g., when consumed with lust, our rational mind would make us think we were behaving rationally. He hoped that drugs would be developed that would allow people to experience each mind directly.
posted by RichardS at 1:47 PM on April 12

Do what the guy in "Altered States" did.
posted by orme at 1:59 PM on April 12

Inspector.Gadget: Most of the people that believe this take copious amounts of drugs, which don't "unlock" anything but enable them to believe that such things are occurring.

metaBugs: When I hear people talk about this, I usually get the impression that they're mystifying the feeling of being "in the zone".

See, I always thought that the "Lizard brain" was just a sort of mystical mumbo-jumbo way to think about some kind of spiritual mojo. [See Motörhead's Love Me Like A Reptile.] But, amazingly enough, googling reveals that in recent years the "Reptilian brain" has referred to a component in neuroscientist Paul MacLean's theory of the Triune Brain, composed of the R-complex (or Reptilian brain), the limbic system, and the neocortex (or cerebral cortex). The R-complex is identified in this theory as the Amygdala.

The Wikipedia article on the Triune Brain claims that this theory is at the moment no longer accepted by neuroscientists. However, the amygdala is the center of the brain that focuses on learning that comes from fear and from emotional experiences and on assimilating short-term memories into the long-term memory.
posted by koeselitz at 2:15 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

... so, I guess if you want to create learning in your Amygdala, you'd have to (a) learn while doing things that are dangerous or scare the crap out of you; or (b) learn to very emotional and and have lots of pathos when you're learning or doing something.
posted by koeselitz at 2:17 PM on April 12

I believe that the use of the term "lizard brain" or "reptilian brain" often refers to the phylogenetically older parts of the central nervous system, including especially those parts that were in place for the last common ancestor of humans and reptiles/amphibians. Crucially, this includes the basal ganglia, which are a bunch of centers involved in movement, appetite and emotion (and lots more). I think it also includes an old visual system that is sensitive to movement in the periphery of the visual field and not much else (which is why it is hard to ignore a TV in a pub, or why gaze is drawn into the fire).

metaBugs seems to be referring to a phenomenal state often termed "flow" and well known to performance athletes, opera singers, and mindfulness practitioners.

But some people just mean thinking with your dick. Whatever.
posted by stonepharisee at 2:32 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

By the way, it's worth noting again that the idea that we inherited a part of our brains from our reptilian ancestors has been pretty firmly repudiated, chiefly because it's just too neat and simple an explanation to cover all the different phenomena associated with the Amygdala. The Wikipedia article on the Triune Brain concept quotes this article.

Scientific American, Dec 2008: The traditional ideas about sequential brain evolution appeared... in the late neuroscientist and psychiatrist Paul D. MacLean’s triune brain model, formulated in the 1960s. MacLean’s model promoted the belief that the human brain contains a “reptilian complex” inherited from reptilian ancestors... Beginning in the 1980s, the field of comparative neuroanatomy experienced a renaissance. In the intervening decades evolutionary biologists had learned a great deal about vertebrate evolutionary history, and they developed new and effective methods of applying Darwin’s concept of the tree of life to analyze and interpret their findings. It is now apparent that a simple linear hierarchy cannot adequately account for the evolution of brains or of intelligence.

... so it appears that "Lizard brain consciousness," at least in the sense of a part of our brain that we inherited from lizards, does not exist.
posted by koeselitz at 3:58 PM on April 12

I've have heard anecdotally in martial arts circles...

As someone who has had the opportunity to observe my pet lizard's behavior for some years, I can definitively say that limiting your brain function to resemble that of a reptile will not give you a martial arts advantage.

Unless you're talking about a martial art whose moves include closing your eyes to ignore stressful stimuli, slowly climbing up things, waddling quickly in short bursts, and knocking over your food bowl.

...and from hippies...

The reptilian mind could make you a better hippie.
posted by univac at 4:28 PM on April 12 [8 favorites has favorites]

When I was standing on the bridge 360 feet above the Zambezi River at Victoria Falls, getting ready to jump off into the abyss with only a large rubber band strapped to my ankles, I got in touch with a very ancient part of my brain that was doing its best to tell my body, "do not jump. do not jump. step away from the edge. do not jump." It could not have been my fish brain (fish live in water, and hence don't have to worry about falling). It probably wasn't my bird brain (birds can fly). It felt older than my mammal brain. So I've always assumed it was my lizrd brain.

If you want to experience this, travel to Zambia, pay a hundred bucks, and bungi jump off the Vic Falls bridge.
posted by alms at 7:52 PM on April 12

I've heard this spun two ways. One is the primal instinct fight or flight level.

The other, well, I'd describe the descriptions I've heard as vague and quasi-mystical. I think metaBugs description is pretty good, though. Don't try to think in words (which takes a lot of time) and just act and react. The most exactly like this experience I ever had involved me doing my little thing, moving to block, and a little voice in my head, unbidden, said, "Mate in three."

Repost.

Block.

Win.

I'd be lying if I said I regularly had experiences like that but it's pretty coll when it happens.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:55 PM on April 12

I've read descriptions of DMT trips that claim to do it.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:04 PM on April 12

Thanks for the discussion. It is a shame I cannot become lizard at this juncture.
posted by Not Supplied at 10:39 AM on April 13