THE HOW THE BRAIN WORKS

All neuroscience is based on a modular brain, each component responsible for certain 'functions,' without explanation of how they cooperate in coordinated responses. This article offers a new theory of neuropsychology—how the brain works, coherently . It provides an accumulation of authoritative evidence that the Reticular Activating System (RAS), including its ‘sentinel,’ the Reticular Formation (RF), with two-way communications with all of the brain and body, is the perfect candidate for the ‘Command and Control System’ in all sentient beings,the de facto manager and coordinator of all brain and body activities. T HE B RAIN - M YStERY OF M ATTER AND M IND U. S. News Books - 1981 The RF, processing100 million internaland environmentalsensory impulses per second, selects‘significant’ stimuli,resolving many biological imbalances ‘silently.’ Others are forwarded to thalamus and midbrain—the locus of RAS and consciousness —thence to the cortex, the ‘hard-drive’ memory of data, sensory and motor neurons, and sensory and motor sequences. RAS extracts nine times more information from cortex to thalamus, providing cognition; and registers relevant cortex memory response sequences in the prefrontal lobes for resolution and implementation via the premotor cortex. The prefrontal cortex is ‘RAM’ workspace, balancing responses until one predominates. RF/RAS monitors and generates responses (or response-impulses) to any disequilibria in 1) any biological/physiological function, 2) in the innate Social-Animal Needs we share with our cousin, the chimpanzee, and 3) in the hundreds of significant, self-adopted beliefs and affections— conscious and subconscious —which constitute the unique ‘Love/Belief System’ wired in each of our brains, between stimlus and cognition . These two sets of programs mingle (one can love SA-Needs for food,sex, socializing, etc), continually generating desiresand fears representing the great majority of RF ‘significant’ stimuli which engross consciousness. We each see, hear, and read ― experience ― the world through our Social-Animal Needs and the unique set of elements, conscious and sbubconscious, of our particular Love/Belief Systems. The Reticular Activating System can be imputed to generate all our emotions, and all our psychopathologies RAS interprets the world differently to each of us , and triggers our responses or response-impulses. Those with unexamined, anarchic Love/Belief Systems are, for the most part, on autopilot—not living, but being lived by the Reticular Activating System,programmed by their Social Animal Needs, and by the conscious and subconscious