Brain-Based Therapy with Adults

The cold evolutionary rationale for this phenomenon may well be that our ancestors faced catastrophic environmental change. Those endowed with a brain that could change rapidly, learn quickly, and maximize the advantages of social networking survived

The human brain has a vested interest in the expression of our genetic endowment for empathy, the human ability to “feel” what others are thinking and feeling, because mindsight is prerequisite to the brain’s very existence. Human infants have very large heads and are born with brains that require, as it were, much home assembly.

Underneath the cortex there were other changes in the brains of our immediate ancestors. “Lower brain” centers, such as the limbic areas and the cerebellum, changed to support the growth of the human behavioral and emotional repertoire.

Paleoanthropologists believe this “great leap forward” could only have come about as a result of changes in the neural architecture underlying our ancestors’ behavior and capacity for internalized thought in the human neocortex

At a time when human populations were dispersing out of Africa, a larger PFC constituted an indispensable asset in enhancing the richness of social bonds and attachment.