Part One: Understanding Heuristics and Biases in Homeland Security: The Triune Pattern-Making Brain

I am working on a multi-part series of Medium posts that will help understand the dynamics at play when making decisions and judgments in the homeland security ecosystem.

To start the series, it will be helpful to go back and review posts related to the social construction of reality and bounded rationality and satisficing before beginning the first post that talks about the triune brain.

Everything we do and everything we think starts with the complex work of the brain.

I have been fascinated with how the brain works for many years. And, as a licensed professional counselor, a basic understanding of how people understand their world is important. As noted in the social construction of reality post, all of us come to adulthood with many social constructions of our current understanding of reality that were made for us in childhood.

Jonathan Haight says in his book, “The Righteous Mind,” that “we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.”

As adults, we have the chance to do the metacognition, or “thinking about thinking” about those ideas, beliefs and constructs and change them, if need be.

Any exploration of heuristics and biases in homeland security needs to first start with an understanding of the basic functions of the brain. I think the triune brain model is helpful for this purpose.

The Triune Brain

The triune brain model is useful in understanding the basic organic structure of the brain and how it relates to ways we think. The “triune” brain has three basic regions — the brainstem, the limbic area, and the prefrontal cortex. The triune brain model, originally developed by Paul MacLean in 1990, postulated an understanding that each of these areas of the brain, work together as one.

The Brainstem

The brainstem is commonly referred to as the “reptilian brain.” The brainstem receives input from the body and sends information back down to regulate the basic physical processes of the body such as the functioning of our heart and lungs. The brainstem helps us determine if we are hungry and other states of arousal such as sexual desire. Clusters of neurons in the brainstem also come into play when certain conditions seem to require a rapid mobilization of energy distribution throughout the body and brain. This so-called fight-flight-freeze response is responsible for our survival at times of danger. Working in concert with the evaluative processes of both the limbic and the higher cortical regions, the brainstem is the arbiter of whether we respond to threats either by mobilizing our energy for combat or for flight, or by freezing in helplessness, collapsing in the face of an overwhelming situation. When we feel a strong drive to behave in a certain way, chances are the brainstem is working closely with the limbic area of the brain.

Dr. Daniel Siegel describes the Triune Brain and its functions well in the following video.

The Limbic Region

The Limbic area of the brain operates many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those that are related to survival.

Khan Academy discusses the Limbic System

There are three main parts to the limbic system; they are the amygdala, hippocampus and the hypothalamus.

Amygdala — The amygdala is an almond shaped organ involved in emotional responses, hormonal secretions, and memory. The amygdala is responsible for fear conditioning or the associative learning process by which we learn to fear something. The part of the brain where the instinctive “fight, flight or freeze” signal is first triggered in the amygdala. It receives incoming stimuli before other parts of the brain have time to think things over. Subsequently, in an ongoing response to potential peril, the brain assures that we are likely to feel more and think less.

Joseph LaDoux, a neuroscientist gives a short primer on the brain’s emotional processor, the amygdala.

Joseph LeDoux states in his text, “The Emotional Brain,” that “the wiring of the brain in our evolutionary history is such that connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems.”

· Hippocampus — The hippocampus acts as a memory indexer — sending memories out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere for long-term storage and retrieving them when necessary.

· Hypothalamus — The hypothalamus is an organ about the size of a pearl in the limbic region. Responsible for a multitude of functions, it wakes us up each morning, and gets our adrenaline flowing. The hypothalamus is also an important emotional center, controlling the molecules that make you feel exhilarated, angry, or unhappy.

The Prefrontal Cortex

The most recently developed part of the human brain — the prefrontal cortex — enables self-reflective, abstract thought. We can think about ourselves as if we are not part of ourselves. In other words, it allows us to think about thinking, also called metacognition.

Khan Academy discusses Emotions and the Prefrontal Cortex

Daniel Siegel in his book, “Mindsight,” points out that, “[b]eyond the bodily and survival concerns of the brainstem, beyond the evaluative and emotional limbic functions, beyond even the perceptual processes of the posterior cortex and the motor functions of the posterior portion of the frontal lobe, we come upon the more abstract and symbolic forms of information flow that seem to set us apart as a species in the prefrontal cortex.”

It is in this prefrontal realm that representations of concepts such as time, a sense-of-self, and moral judgments are made. In other words, this is the main integration center for the triune brain model where patterns and clusters of information are formulated.

With this simple understanding of the triune brain, I will explore the dual process theory of thinking in part two of the series.

Angi English has a Master’s in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security and a Master’s in Educational Psychology from Baylor University. She is also a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Texas. She lives in Austin, Texas