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Unpacking Your Mind 11

rant, we have begun to find out a little more about how it works in
the last few decades.
In the next few pages you will find out some of the basic
science underpinning the operation of your mind.
However, let me start with a health warning. As with all
simple explanations of deeply complex issues, there is a dan-
ger that too much can be read into a few short paragraphs.
Inevitably, this leads to disappointment. On the other hand,
if you see what follows as a number of different ways of look-
ing at your mysterious mind, possibly as metaphors, then you may
find that more helpful. The neuroscientist Professor Susan
Greenfield put it like this at a Royal Institution seminar:

It does not matter that popular science may not get things completely right;
at least it offers a mental model for what is going on inside the brain.

YOUR THREE BRAINS

In 1978 Paul Maclean proposed the idea that we have three brains,
not one. This is a difficult notion to grasp, but stay with it for a
moment. Imagine you can reach forward and remove the two outer
brains: they will come away quite easily and you will be left with an
apricot-sized object (see Figure 1). This is sometimes called your
primitive or reptilian brain; as its name suggests, it is the bit that

"Learning"
brain
(or neocortex) "Mammalian"
brain
(or limbic system)

"Reptilian"
brain

Figure 1 Three brains