← Building blocks
Three brains
Instinct, emotion and thinking: who's in charge under stress.
Think of your brain as three helpers. The instinct brain keeps you alive, the emotion brain makes you feel, and the thinking brain plans and decides. This is a simple picture, not exact anatomy: the old "triune brain" model by MacLean is outdated, but the idea that stress hands control to faster systems is well supported (Arnsten, 2009 review).