MYTHBUSTER
DO WE ALL HAVE A ‘LIZARD BRAIN’?
You may have heard that in moments of high stress or sudden anger, a primitive part of our brain takes over. And that this irrational side of us doesn’t come from the highly evolved, human part of us; it’s down to the residue of our reptilian ancestors that evolution left within our brain, untouched. Your ‘lizard brain’, some say, is to blame.
The lizard brain theory was coined in the 1960s by neuroscientist Paul MacLean. MacLean was studying the brains of humans and other animals in the hopes of understanding where negative emotions come from.