Amygdala hijack
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Second, although during the process the "emotional brain [amygdala] activity processes information milliseconds earlier than the rational brain, so in case of a match, the amygdala acts before any possible direction from the neocortex can be received", you can during non-emergency time reprogram the "immediate action plan" that the amygdala will enact during non-emergency time.
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E.g.: "adrenaline re-imprinting" is a thing. There are self-defense courses that literally reprogram your brain to have a more useful response! We often talk about "fight or flight" and omit the third typical response: "freeze". The formula is "fight or flight or freeze". In an adrenaline re-imprinting self-defense course you learn to change the response to an organized, coherent defensive manouver. It's so effective that people (attackers) are literally intimidated at a deep organic level. One's body knows that even a small woman in the throes of an adrenaline rush can kill with a single blow, just like in the movies, and no one sane will persist.
Story time. I took one of these courses and it worked: I was about to be set upon by three young thugs and the defensive posture and response triggered and, sure enough, they halted, taken aback, and were thereafter wary of me. We talked for a bit and at one point I made a motion with my arm and the boys fell back and raised their arms to guard themselves. I tell you they were frightened of me, after seeing a full-on coherent adrenaline response! A few minutes later a police car rolled up to talk to them, I wasn't the first person they messed with that day, and I left.
Anyhow, yes, amygdala goes first if it thinks it needs to, but it is your job to equip your amygdala with good programs for those emergencies. Same principle as buying a fire extinguisher, eh? Safety first and all that?
Is this a part of a martial art? What is the term for such training?
I did a search for "adrenaline re-imprinting" and it looks like these folks are doing the same or something very similar: https://carpediemselfdefence.com/adrenal/
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edit: replying to bombcar and phenkdo:
This wasn't repetitive training, the whole class took only a few hours, we didn't learn fancy martial arts moves just a few very basic responses, the core of it was inducing controlled adrenaline rushes and then consciously responding in coherent ways which then (somehow) get "programmed" into the (?) amygdala to be activated automatically when the stimuli recur.
In the later stages of the class a big guy puts on one of those bear-proof suits and comes at you. I saw small ladies beat the everlovin shit outta that bear-man. Like fractured or broken bones and concussions delivered (virtually! The guy in the suit just gets rattled.)
The weird thing is you don't break your own bones. Adrenaline is a hellofa drug.
caveat: have cursory knowledge of neuroscience
This subtle preparation of mind and body in location of space and time. You move between the attacker and your loved ones. You gaurd up, and prepare to deal with the matter at hand in the now, trying your best not to let emotions play into further escalations but knowing shit is about to go down. Seeing a person or animal go into offensive or defensive manuvering as if a switch was turned on is always an intimidating observation and thus you could disarm an attacker's momentum and allow for potential descalations.
That said I've took a punch to the face sober from a slightly older drunk man because I was young and didn't understand he was in a different realm. Be careful with your freeze response and know yourself and your enemy.
Freezing is a good response when a weapon is pulled because it gives a chance to descalation. Freezing yeild advantage to the attacker so keep in mind: you may be ambushed on a whim so minimize your time spent freezing. Think and perceive just enough to allow your mature conscious egoic mind to choose a path, for example: instead of taking a punch to the face, disarm the drunk before he has a chance by a quick shove and entering a defensive position you have practiced and rehearsed since a child. Shout, "what the fuck do you think you are doing", make noise and draw attention. You have to put into action your training during these situations so you don't get anyone killed, but you also have to be ready to kill.
I remember reading a comment on AskReddit from an Iraq veteran. They were clearing a house and walked past a stairway. He checks the stairway and there’s a guy pointing an RPG directly at him. Without even thinking, he shoots and kills the guy. This was his first real combat engagement, and he said he was kind of shocked that without any conscious thought his training just sort of took over.
There’s another anecdote about the training thing. I forget where I heard it from, but the guy did lots of martial arts and knew the techniques to disarm someone attacking him with a knife. Anyway, this guy gets attacked with a knife, and his training just kicks in, and he successfully disarms the guy and takes the knife from him. And then—because this is what he does in training—he immediately handed the knife back to the guy, who stabbed him. That’s a pretty dire illustration of the point, I think, but people under stress can be extremely stupid exactly because they are executing whichever program got imprinted into their brain.
What really gets hijacked here is a basic understanding of neuroscience and neuroanatomy, used to support otherwise unsubstantiated theories of what is presented as a neurological phenomenon.
Look at the sources of this article: The UMass Family Business Center, Sport and Recreation New Zealand, the CEO of True North Leadership. None of them are scientific, none of them present any evidence themselves, all of them are regurgitations of the original source: Daniel Goleman and his book.
If Goleman presents any actual scientific evidence of this phenomenon in his book, none of it is listed in that article. It's just more pop psychology, more "Your right brain is responsible for creativity so you should focus on doing things with your left hand", "the limbic system is the primitive reptile brain", and other BS like that.
We literally have no idea what most brain structures actually do, just that they're involved in various processes, so to make the definitive claim that "this is how these processes work" is disingenuous at best.
/rant
> Joseph E. LeDoux was positive about the possibility of learning to control the amygdala's hair-trigger role in emotional outbursts. "Once your emotional system learns something, it seems you never let it go. What therapy does is teach you how to control it—it teaches your neocortex how to inhibit your amygdala. The propensity to act is suppressed, while your basic emotion about it remains in a subdued form."[11]
also makes a lot of sense to me. It reminds me of the highest-rated visual novel of all time, Muv-Luv Alternative, which really retrains your brain so that you know to control your emotions and act responsibly and calmly even under the most adversarial and unexpected circumstances. It is the only piece of literally life-changing art that I've ever come across and I recommend everybody to read it. https://vndb.org/v92
On the negative valenced side, it's not just a panic attack. It's more related to fight-or-flight than anxiety, though I see cases where amygdala hijack is overlapping with a panic attack.
Explain how out of control laughter elicits a fight reflex or a run reflex? Fight or flight is explicitly a survival mechanism.
Maybe a full on panic attack since that generally refers to something that isn't actually dangerous isn't the right word but anxiety/fear certainly is. PA's ARE fight/flight by the way.
More generally just calling it anxiety would be fine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_fu...
In a true fight/flight scenario your amygdala responds in such a quick way that you really don't have time to override it. This IS a panic attack, except that panic attacks are usually used in reference to something that's not a real imminent danger. Regardless, the body response is the same with adrenaline, heightened sense etc..
I see no reason to get pedantic with it and create and entirely new sensationalist term to describe what is essentially a panic response.
Also, in the example you've given most people have the ability actually think through the process logically and make a decision before they decide on something like voting.
In a true "amygdala hijack" (like a panic attack) you don't get the chance to decide you just immediately respond with fight/flight. If you had the ability to think it through it would be a shit survival mechanism.