Response flexibility harnesses the power of the middle prefrontal region to put a temporal space between input and action. This ability to pause before responding is an important part of emotional and social intelligence.

outer and higher cortex—we could call this “vertical integration.” The brain is also divided into two halves, left and right, so neural integration must also involve linking the functions of the two sides of the brain. This could be called “horizontal” or “bilateral integration.”

The middle prefrontal cortex—the region that calms the emotionally reactive lower limbic and brainstem layers—stops being able to regulate all the energy being stirred up, and the coordination and balance of the brain is disrupted. That’s my understanding of what happens when we go down the “low road,” moving directly from limbic impulse to speech

This “old mammalian brain” works closely with the brainstem and the body proper to create not only our basic drives but also our emotions. These feeling states are filled with a sense of meaning because the limbic regions evaluate our current situation. “Is this good or is this bad?”

The amazingly adaptive perceptual functions of the back of the cortex have embedded that object into your body-maps so that it is neurally experienced like an extension of your body. This is how we can drive rapidly on a freeway or park a car in a tight space, use a scalpel with precision, or attain a .300 batting average.

Naturally there are times when we “just listen” to music, get lost in it, and enter the “flow” of the melody. We are immersed, self-consciousness disappears, and the boundaries between ourselves and the focus of our attention—the music—melt away. Flow can be fabulous. But sometimes we absolutely need reflection and not flow. In many ways I was in t

The amygdala can prompt an instantaneous survival response.

We can say that any healthy complex system has a FACES flow. In other words, when the self-organizational movement of the system is maximizing complexity, it attains a harmonious flow that is at once flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable.

I’ve come to call this set of circuits—from mirror neurons to subcortical regions, back up to the middle prefrontal areas—the “resonance circuits.” This is the pathway that connects