Neuroscience of Trauma

[In Editing Mode: will be updated by the end of the month]

I'm going to begin this conversation by going back to a little bit of the basics about uh the brain structures, a little bit more about neurotransmitters and the stress response. I will also be touching upon a little amount of a knowledge in epigenetics. I will not be delving deeper into these topics today. But these are necessary for us to differentiate between what is a traumatic response and what is a stressful response and also to understand what is going on in the background when someone has experienced trauma and should someone continue to experience PTSD or have trauma reexperiencing or have situations of re-traumatization what is going on at the biological level at the body level. So these backgrounds will help us go beyond what is happening to the brain in the moment and perhaps provide us with um added knowledge about how the body and the brain continue to function thereafter having experienced the trauma.

So in my previous lectures I have covered this topic about amygdala. I'm revisiting this concept today because it's important for us to understand that amygdala is not a fear center. That amygdala predominantly functions as a novelty detector. It is existing in our systems in our brain for for the action of understanding what is a salient stimulus. That is to say if any stimulus that enters your word in uh comes into recognition in your cortical systems does that system demand a reaction from the amygdala or not? If it is a normal stimulus, if it is something that brain has already experienced in life and does not need to learn from the stimulus, does not need to create a differentiated response to the stimulus, then the amygdala is not reactive. If the stimulus is fairly new, it is a novel stimuli. The the brain has not experienced such sensation before, it could be a potential potentially important stimuli, but we do not know that as of yet. That's when your amygdala kicks in. So in this so-called new environment, emotionally salient environment, you have a stimulus that triggers the amygdala reaction.

Now what happens in this situation is that this novelty stimulus gets processed in the amygdala and the amydala sends out a response which is either negative or positive or it's just a neutral response. If the response is negative, then the stimulus gets categorized as a threat. The reason behind all of this is because amygdala reactions take about half a second to two seconds for it to occur. However, processes within prefrontal cortex demand a lot more energy from the system, demand a lot more uh response time uh which is not beneficial in a situation wherein someone might find themselves in a threatening scenario. So in such scenarios we cannot rely on our pre-frontal cortex to define whether what we are experiencing is threatening or not. we don't have reason working in these uh scenarios. Why? Because the quickest reaction is the best way for one to survive.

So hence we have a station called as the amygdala which is a novelty processing station and the relevance or importance detector which aids us in our processing. We also have some other brain regions that do pop up several times not just during these situations not just during amydala reactions but they are often popping up in association with each other. One such station is the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) which is very important for one to emotionally and socially process things which could be context dependent. So if you have a social stimulus or an emotional stimulus you don't know if that stimulus is going to require certain amount of uh reactivity from your end. it is all context dependent. So that's where your Anterior Cingulate Cortex comes in. We have the Insula which provides you an internal body state. It provides you with interoception. It provides you with self-awareness. It is what distinguishes between who I am versus who you are. So it provides you with this me versus you uh in-group versus out-group detection.

We have the prefrontal cortex which is involved in complex cognitive behavior decision making and moderating several behavioral situations that may arise in your social scenarios. Now prefrontal cortex is also very important for u for basically dealing with hypocrisies in life. And it requires a lot more time for one to arrive at this point in life where one might be like oh this is beneficial for society but the same reaction in a different context is not beneficial. I'll give you an example over here. If someone were to join the army and were to go and shoot people down, shoot your enemies down, they are often provided with a medal in our society. Now, if the same person were to shoot people down inside your own country, they would be called a terrorist. They would be hunted down. Now, that is a hypocrisy. There is a hypocrisy in which you identify that these individuals are in-group individuals and these individuals are outgroup individuals. It does not matter to me if the outgroup individuals die. But it does matter a lot to me if the in-group individuals die. If we were to maintain similar amounts or levels of moral reasoning, we would be doing that across groups. But we don't do that. There is a tendency for human beings to be more lenient towards in-group people versus outgroup people. And hence killing people abroad might be considered good in your society. But killing people at your own home might deem you to a prison cell. So that's where your prefrontal cortex comes in. It helps you to understand the hypocrisies of the world that you live in and make moral reasoning based on these hypocrisies. Uh we have the temporal loes which are also involved in memory and learning.

Which brings me to some basics regarding neurotransmitters. And those of you who have attended my previous lectures, you may want to skip this because we have already covered this in detail in the neuroscience of pain and pleasure class. But for those who have not attended those lectures, this one is for you. Let's begin with dopamine. Dopamine is not a pleasure hormone. Dopamine is released in anticipation of a reward. It is often released when the reward rate is 50% of the time. That is to say, if the reward is presented to you only 50% of the time or lower, dopamine is going to spike really hard. But if your uh reward rate is about at 70% of the time or at 100% of the time, dopamine spikes are going to be lower than that of the reward rate of 50% of the time. This is the reason why when we look into delayed gratification wherein we are not able to predict what the reward rate is like our dopamine levels are skyrocketing. Let's move on to testosterone. Testosterone is a neuromodulator. It is often released to amplify society accepted behaviors that help defend one's social status. So if your society rewards aggression as a society accepted norm to defend your social status, then your testosterone is going to amplify aggressive behaviors to defend your social status. If your society says, okay, you got to give more charity donations in order to defend your social status that the more the charity donations that you give, the higher your social status. Then if testosterone is released, you're going to give a lot more charity donations so as to defend your social status. And all of these things occur when your social status is being threatened. And when you think it is being threatened, you're going to adopt those behaviors that you think that the society is uh accepting of such behaviors.

So let's move on to oxytocin. Oxytocin is also a neuromodulator that when it is released, it amplifies the dichotomy between in-group and outgroup responses. That is to say, when you release oxytocin, you are not in love. You're it's not the love hormone. You don't experience the need to be kind to every individual. No, you only experience the need to be kind or nice to someone if that person is part of your group. If that individual is outside of your group or is being classified as an outgroup member, then when your oxytocin is being released, you're going to be much more aggressive to that particular individual. Let's move on to cortisol. Cortisol uh you require at least a little bit amount of cortisol. you require uh there is a degree to cortisol that is required for you to have u a normal development process. Um if you don't get that amount of cortisol you either risk being unstimulated which is bored or you are on the opposite end of the spectrum wherein you're over stimulated and stressed out. Let's talk a bit more about stress. So to discuss stress, one needs to understand homeostasis. So homeostasis is defined as the body's natural state of balance. Be it in terms of physical activity, be it in terms of mental, be it in terms of emotional, be it in terms of immunological, uh there are several ways of looking at it. There is a natural state of balance for every single body out there. Um that is called the homeostasis for your body. If there exists anything that threatens that natural state of balance, any amount of trigger to that n natural state of balance is called a stressor.

We have several different types of stressors. We have a positive stressor which is moderate and short-lived and is extremely important for healthy development. We have a tolerable stressor which is severe enough to disrupt the brain architecture if if it goes unchecked. Um it can be alleviated if you have supportive environments, if you have relationships that are strong enough that will facilitate your coping strategies and your uh healing processes. Um the tolerable stresses are often always time limited and they provide the brain with some amount of time to recover from the stress. We have a toxic stressor. It is quite severe and chronic. It occurs in the absence of supportive environments. So if you do not have people around you, if you do not have supportive figures in your environment that can help you alleviate these symptoms that you're feeling, help you with coping skills, help you in healing, then there's a chance of the stressor to become toxic. Prolonged levels of these stress hormones that are being released can cause damage to tissues and risk a higher vulnerability to health issues later on in life. An important term to note here is an allostatic load. When stress hormones are elevated for a long period of time, they cause a lot of wear and tear on the tissues and on other biological systems. This is called as an alostostatic load. The image on your right uh explains the stressors that you might experience in your childhood. Uh this is a fun image for you to even share with your clients

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and with your communities if you would like to uh if you'd like to explain this concept to them. >> [gasps] >> One more thing I'd like to note here is the pathways with by which we release glucocorticoids into the system. Um let's say you experience some stresses. There is a brain system called as the hypothalamus which releases a hormone called as CR. that CR positively influences the anterior pituitary gland to res to release act which also stimulates the adrenal cortex

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to release cortisol. Now this whole pathway has a negative feedback loop as well. If let's say you have a stressor, it has triggered the hypothalamus to release the CR. CRS has triggered the uh anterior pituitary to release ACT. ACT has triggered the adrenal cortex to release cortisol and it has gone into the liver, fat, muscles, lymphocytes, all of these areas and it increases beyond that threshold level that is required within the body. So when it increases beyond that level, it triggers the negative feedback loop wherein more

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the cortisol in your body, it causes the act levels to reduce. It also causes the CR levels to reduce. So it will create a negative feedback loop with the hypothalamus to prevent more release of the CR. If more release of the CR is prevented then anterior pituitary gland is not triggered. If anterior pituitary gland is not triggered then act is not released. So this is how your normal stress response works like in your body. I'm going to come back to this figure again later on. Uh one more important

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thing to note here is that not everything in life is traumatic. Sometimes things can just be stressful in nature. Yes, things can still be toxic. It can still ex you can still experience toxic stress and not experience trauma from it. Trauma is uh trauma is an event that has occurred that not only triggers stressful response within your body but also impacts your memory systems, it impacts your cognitive systems, it impacts your in some cases it also impacts your immune systems. So there are a lot of

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ways in which trauma works. So it is very important to note that not every uh activity not every experience in life is traumatic which brings me to intergenerational trauma. We have all heard this being floating around in our circles for quite a long time that trauma can be passed down through your genes and all of that. Technically that is incorrect. It does not pass down through one's genes. It does however influence how those genes are being read. So I'm going to introduce you to the

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concept of epigenetics and I'm going to use a lot of metaphors over here. Let's suppose you go to a library and you would like to read a book in the library. Now, there are several factors that might influence whether or not you get to read that book in the library. Those factors may include um someone having already bought the book, someone having borrowed the book, the book is out of stock in some way or the other, or it could be that the library doesn't have the book in the first place. Or it could also be the

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fact that the book is being written in a different language and you don't know how to read that language and you're looking for a translation but there is no translation available to you. There are several conditions that limit us from reading those pages that are written in those books. This is the easiest way in which I can explain epigenetics. Your genome, the genes that you have inherited is like a library of inherited set of genes. There are several environmental [clears throat] factors that determine whether or not

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that gene gets to be read. Whether or not you're able to read that gene or understand what information is contained within that gene depends on several factors to exist in accordance to the fact that this gene has to be read. But you're not able to do that. So epigenetics is is what besides epigenetics are factors that decide whether or not certain books get read, whether or not certain genes get read. In order to in in a better way to say this is epigenetics decide whether or not certain genes get turned

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on or whether they get turned off. If they get turned off, they cannot be recognized. They stay invisible. If they stay invisible, they may not be able to get processed. If they don't get processed, they won't get read. So, let's explain this further. What is epigenetics? It refers to factors that determine whether or not genes get expressed. What do I mean by expression? So, genes follow a certain pathway. You have a DNA which goes through a process called transcriptions to form a molecule

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called as mRNA. Now that molecule gets translated to form what we know as proteins. A better way to look at it is that upon the expression of proteins, you get to know whether um you're going to have blue eyes or brown eyes or your height is going to be really tall or not. Your hair is going to be frizzy or not. Your hair is going to be curly or not. And there's several things and these are just phenotypes. These are things that you can see. There are a lot of things that are at the genotypical level which are not

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observable factors that you can see but it is happening inside of your body. So what determines an epigenetic marker is several things. One of those factors is parental care. Another factor could be prenatal environment. The third factor could be anybody in your family in before you were born having experienced a traumatic experience such that those markers, those stress markers were passed on to the next generation. Irrespective of the fact that the next generation may not have experienced the same trauma, they

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may still inherit the same markers. So if they inherit the similar kind of markers, then there is a chance of it being expressed. If it is being expressed, it may in it may deter the gene expression from happening. If the gene expression is being deterred then there's a chance of that phenotype not being expressed. Why do I go into all of this in detail? uh I'm going to explain why is because when we talk about stress when we talk about trauma we have to understand that not every individual who experiences the

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same kind of trauma or the same kind of stressor is going to have the similar kind of reaction to it. Every individual has a baseline. Every individual is able to cope to a certain degree and every individual possesses certain types of markers that may end up interacting with their genes in order to ensure that uh certain genes are not being expressed, certain genes are not being read. If certain genes are not being read, then there's a chance of something like a stress response to occur without the

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negative feedback loop being introduced. If the negative feedback loop is not introduced, then there's a chance of you going on producing cortisol on and on and on and on and on creating an environment which can be completely in a chronic stressed level state which can further influence your health risks in the future as well. Let's get back to this. One of the ways in which an epigenetic marker can be formed is through a process called as methilation. Methilation is the attachment of the

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methile group that is CH3 group to certain DNA codons and it impacts by impacts the whole process based on the ease by which the transcription or the expression of the DNA can actually occur. For example, let's take the animal model of rats. The behavior that one is observing here is the licking behavior of mothers towards the pups. Now, how it has been categorized in all of these experiments is that you have high-licking mothers and you've got low-licking mothers. The effects on this high licking and low licking is stress

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responses. How much of stress is the mother exposed to? Does that result in the mother displaying high-licking behaviors or low-licking behaviors? If the mother ends up uh licking the pup a lot more than the low-looking mothers, then how does that impact the neural development of the pup? How does that impact the learning and memory of the pup? How does that further impact the metabolism and reproduction? So let's look in the first exper experiment involves the differentiation in the licking behavior

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and what they have said is that it is stress dependent and if you can see in the graph uh the high licking mothers are also exposed to chronic stress every day during pregnancy. But when they are exposed to chronic stress every day during pregnancy, they suddenly turn licking. So if they suddenly turn low-licking after giving birth, then the amount of attention provided to the pups is very low. If the amount of attention provided to the pups is very low, then there are is a chance of the pup not developing

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the way it is supposed to develop. And experiment two looks at the variation in the parental care and how does that impact the stress responses in the offspring. So let's say you take a high-licking mother and a low-looking mother and you take two babies, two cups from the low-looking mother and give it to the high-looking mother. You take two uh two pups from the high-licking mother and you give it to the low-licking mother. How does that impact the offspring? Well, the low-licking babies that were given to the high-licking

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mother uh would end up developing normal. It reverses every parental effect that they have experienced with respect to trauma. Whereas with respect to the low-licking mother being given high-licking mother's babies, it drastically ends up um impacting these individ. So the conclusion here is that there is a variance in parenting and that drives the development of these effects. So remember when I mentioned that DNA methilation impacts transcription that is to say the first step of recognizing

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the DNA codon is transcription. So if you have DNA methylation then that codon does not get recognized. If it does not get recognized it is not going to be expressed. If it is not going to be expressed it does not create proteins. It cannot be read. nothing can happen. It becomes invisible. So which brings me to the experiment number three. What happens during methilation? Let's say you have a codon over there on the top and it you attach methile groups to the codon. What happens? So they check for cmethylation. when a

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highlicking offspring is fostered by a low-looking mother and vice versa. And the observations that they found is that whether it is high or low of uh licking offspring uh it it shows an increase in methilation in the offspring. uh that is to say if the offspring comes from a highlicking mother and has been given to a low-licking mother then there is an increase in methilation. If the offspring comes from a low-licking mother and is given to a highlicking mother then there is a decrease in methilation. What does that mean? That

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means that epigenetic marker is being defined by the quality of parental care not by inheritance. It is the quality of parenting care that defines whether or not the next offspring carries the epigenetic marker further. So remember the stress response cycle which is on the left. So the one on the right here is explaining how this methilation impacts the receptors. So there is this hypocampus in your brain which has a lot of receptors. Now if you remember you experience stress the h uh oh I'm sorry not you experience stress

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uh the hypothalamus releases uh CR it ends up uh impacting the anterior pituitary gland and which releases act and the act impacts your adrenal cortex which releases uh cortisol. Now that cortisol has a negative feedback loop going all the way to your pituitary to your hypothalamus and even to your hippocampus as well. So if it is impacting your hippocampus as well. Now hypocampus has receptors for these uh for all of these glucocorticoids. Cortisol is one of those glucocortids. So if it has got all these receptors up

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there and it has a negative feedback loop on that receptor, that means that hypocampus is not creating the response required for the hypothalamus to even release the first hormone in the first place. So if it does not release the hormone in the first place, the negative feedback loop is uh ends up not working. So, and that's how you stop this whole cortisol uh response. However, let's say uh something happens and the amount of receptors present in the hippocampus is very very few and you need at least 10

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receptors over there but you have only five receptors which means you still get a response being sent to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus still triggers the pituitary, the pituitary still triggers the adrenal glands and there is no way of stopping this response because no matter how much of cortisol you release because you've got very less of these receptors in your hypoc campus there is no way for you to prevent this release of signal that goes into your hypothalamus that goes into your pituitary that goes into your

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adrenal glands. Hence this cycle continues and continues and continues and there's a buildup of gluccocorticoids in your systems. This is what we call as chronic stress which brings me to our uh topic of the day which is uh trauma. So this whole part of this conversation is going to be based on sexual trauma because many of us come from that field and we are going to have to understand how sexual trauma works in [snorts] the brain. So the first and foremost thing that I would like to do is stop the usage of fight or

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flight response. Why? Well, that term has been coined in 20th century uh by Walter Cannon. It is in response to the body's internal response to stressful stimuli. It is not for outward behavior. It was not coined to be a definition for outward behavior in the first place. uh when we use fight or flight, we are constantly in the situation of marketing it as the norm which has become a thing across um across popsy cultures wherein the only thing that we talk about is fight or flight response. Um

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during an assault, the last thing that is happening is fight or flight. The very first response an individual ends up having and this is specifically for sexual assault. Uh it could also be for several different types of assaults wherein an individual feels extremely powerless in these situations that the last thing that you'll be thinking about is fight or flight. It's very rare for that to occur. However, freeze and fawn responses, they are not secondary. In fact, quite often they might appear as primary

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responses to the situation. So even if we use the term fight, flight, freeze, fawn, we are still promoting this whole logic of fight and flight being the primary responses and not uh freeze and fall being the primary responses. So bodies in not just human beings, animals as well, the first thing that they have learned [clears throat] to do is to freeze first. Gather all the information before there is a trigger and right after the trigger. You then respond with certain types of survival reflexes or certain types of habitual

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responses. And this has worked for generations, for eons in the survival of human beings, in the survival of several animal species as well. A little bit of trauma basics over here. Please do not tell individuals that you need to think why weren't you thinking in a situation? Why did you go out there and do this behavior? You could not have thought your way out of this. That is the worst thing you can possibly say to people who have experienced sexual assault. Reason being that the minute the defense circuitry is

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activated, your preffrontal cortex gets impaired. Why? Because if you remember, it takes a lot of time and energy for the prefrontal cortex to function. If it takes that long for the prefrontal cortex to function, the chances are that when all of this thing is happening, you may not even survive. So you require a brain system that is going to be quick in its manner of uh approaching these threatening situations which is going to be quick enough for you to provide a response and survive the situation. So

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the brain system that is often activated is the amygdala. Why? Because you also have to notice if it is a novel stimuli. Amydala's first reaction is to check if that novel stimuli is salient enough or not. If it is salient enough, is it threatening? Is it not threatening? Is it neutral? What is it? So once the amydala has done all of these um processing, it relies on either reflex responses which are hardwired into your brain or on habitual responses which are often used to deal with aggressive and

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dominant people. And habitual responses are things that you have often used throughout your life up until this point. uh which just seems like just another habit of yours. So let's look at these responses further. Uh we have reflexes and habits. Habits often include passive and polite behaviors which are common in dating circles which are common for people who are experiencing child abuse situations, common in people who have experienced any kind of domination in life. You will have passive and polite behaviors that

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you have picked up as habits. You have reflexes, survival reflexes that take the form of freezing which can occur in three different types. You have a detection freeze. You've got a no good choices freeze. You have a shocked freezing. You also have extreme survival reflexes which take the form of dissociation, chronic immobility and collapsed immobility. You also have dissociative states which involve autopilot which involve a lot of submission and you might enter the stage wherein you might even go along with a

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sexual act if you uh if that's what your brain chooses to do. So why? Because the other option is far worse according to the brain and that might involve you in a far worse situation. So the brain decides to just get along with the act in order to survive. So I'm going to talk you through the process and then I'm going to show you some videos of how it looks like so that you can have a look at it as well. So you first start with freezing. Yeah. In the first one to three seconds you are

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in the stage of detection freeze. Uh this is when everything stops. You hear a lull in your brain. Uh all the other um sounds just fade into silence. And the brain at this moment what it's trying to do it's trying its level best to detect every single thing that is around you that can help you in the future in order to detect situations like this. So let's say you are in a room and someone attacks you or something like that. What are you going to do? You're going to look at everything that is present around you.

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Is it the door? Is it the smell of the cologne? Is it the uh room? Is it the lighting in the room? Is it the sofa? Is it the upholstery? Is it the carpet that is around? Everything around that the brain can get its attention on, it is going to get its attention on. Why? Because after this point, you don't have memory that is being encoded. If you don't have memory that is being encoded after this point and it [clears throat] reduces later on the chances of you remembering such an incident from

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happening is very very low. So later on in your life, if you were to find yourself in a situation like this, your brain is going to remember, oh, these are the things that led to this situation in the first place, but now I'm in that situation again. So I am going to stop and I'm going to uh run away or I'm going to defend myself. So the brain has enough amount of information in the second round for it to be able to survive in later instances or later situations that it may find itself in.

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After the detection phase, one might experience the shocked freezing. In a shocked freezing stage, it may continue as the same lull. You may have difficulty in remembering what's going on. Not remembering, you may have difficulty in processing what's going on. So let's say the you're in a cafe or something like that. It's a busy cafe and things. Something has happened in that cafe that has gotten you into the detection freeze stage and all of a sudden the noise is becoming silent and you're not able to

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hear the other people around you. Uh you may not even hear your asalants's voice. You may not even hear the person who is assaulting you what they're trying to say. You may still be experiencing the same lull. You're still a bit shocked because your brain is in this moment wherein it's not able to uh immediately respond with what to do. this blank mind and then there is no behavior that comes from that blank mind can last for a few seconds which then follows the no good choices freezing stage. Now this thing you can

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have either extremely passive behaviors or extremely reactive behaviors that the brain is trying to decide what do I do? Should I slap this person? Should I punch this person? Should I start a fight? Should I run? If I run, what pro where do I run from? Like what is my escape route going to look like? I don't know if I have pepper spray with me or not. I don't know. This person is not uh listening to me. So what do I do? And every single choice that the brain comes up with involves a lot more energy than

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your body can actually spare in such situations. So if it involves a lot more energy than the body can spare then you may end up in scenarios of uh continuing freezing behaviors or dissociation or tonic immobility or collapsed immobility. So let's suppose you don't escape from this uh extreme survival behavior uh extreme survival instance and it involves you to rely on your extreme survival reflexes of dissociation tonic immobility and collapsed immobility. Dissociation at this point kicks in when

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you are spaced out and you are in this autopilot mode. uh where you might rely on some habitual behaviors which may include things like um for example you can always smile and tell your if if that is what you have learned all your life. If that's how you have learned to deal with people who are abusive, people who are dominating in nature and your way to deal with it is by uh acting like a nice girl kind of a behavior wherein you apologize for uh stepping in, stepping out of boundaries and putting the other asalent in that

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situation that uh allows them to assault you. So you adopt this uh behavior of oh I'm sorry uh let's say you are in for example you are in a bus and you're traveling in this bus you're traveling in this uh public transport there is someone behind you who has groped you inappropriately and instead of uh responding to that individual in a curt manner that don't touch me like that or slapping that indiv individual or walking away from the situation or whatever whatever the behavior that you may adopt in that

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situation, you respond with, "Oh, I'm sorry I stepped in your way." And there are a lot of times that people have responded in this manner. The reason why they might do that is because that's the way that they have been taught in their entire life that that's the only thing that helps you out of situations wherein there is a dominating personality in your house. There are abusive parents. There are parents who are helicopter parents uh parents who have no boundaries with their children

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and they go on imposing themselves on the children and the only way out from those situation could have been oh I'm sorry and just saying I'm sorry might give you an opportunity for uh the asalent to just back off which gives you an opportunity to run away which gives you an opportunity to escape the situation. So your brain has learned this coping mechanism of adopting these passive and effective behaviors uh which will help you survive situations that you have experienced all your life. This comes from gender

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socialization. This comes from childhood abuse situations. It comes from face saving habits, submission habits. All of these things get categorized into these habitual responses. So you are let's say you dissociate and you're completely spaced out. Now in such situations dissociation can also at some point end up uh end up in in a scenario wherein you're also experiencing tonic immobility or collapsed immobility. Tonic immobility involves paralyzed muscles. Collapsed immobility involves muscles

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going completely limp and you are dizzy and you pass in and out in and out in and out in and out. So if you are in for those who are in BDSM situations, if you experience someone in tonic immobility or collapsed immobility, it is important for you to check in and ask them if and possibly stop the scene and also look at whether or not they're dissociating. Are there any things that are triggering these behaviors that go beyond the freeze and habitual behaviors to even extreme survival reflexes

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and the interest of time I'm not going to go into this but you can always pause and take a screenshot of this or you can always refer to the class notes in the end and you will find this slide over there. Let's look at these extreme survival reflexes in further detail. And here is one of those videos for you. >> Fix me a drink, will you? I don't know. You >> know what these guys do all day? I've seen the movies. Pretend like I'm your boss. Donald Draper. >> Okay, one drink.

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Dr. Harris, are you trying to examine me? >> Maybe. [snorts] >> Not in here. >> That Sterling guy knows an awful lot about you. >> I've been working here for 9 years. >> Greg, don't. It isn't my office. >> It's okay. So uh this video will also be provided to you in the list of resources. Before we had this pop up. Now you would have seen the reaction in her face. This was a man that she was dating possibly romantically engaged with for a while

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and suddenly there is this shock face. there is this oh I'm detecting something uh that is going to be possibly traumatic in my life and she is calculating everything that is happening that has led to this situation in the first place and the brain is constantly doing that so that it can encode those memories for further use so We go from the detection phrase uh sorry detection freeze to the shocked freeze to no good choices freeze as I've explained before. Let's look at some videos on uh

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dissociation and uh passive habitual responses. Greg, don't. It is in my office. It's okay now. I mean it. >> Come on, >> Greg. This isn't fun. >> This is what you want, right? >> Stop. [clears throat] >> It's okay, >> Greg. No. >> [snorts] [sighs] >> So what happens when she dissociates? The worst thing happens her awareness is in the situation wherein she's like I am not able to move. I'm not able to do anything. I've completely dissociated.

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She was so she's going to concentrate on anything else like oh the sounds of the traffic below or maybe the upholstery in on the sofa or uh or the bus in the room and all of these gets encoded in your brain. So later on if someone were to ask her what happened, these are the things that she's going to remember. Not when something happened, not how it happened. It's just these that give that get more attention. For those of you who are watching this, I would love for you to make note of

00:54:28

some passive, polite, habitual responses that you have adopted over the years that you think you might experience when you feel threatened in a situation. If you have someone in that room, when you go into a situation that you might feel you might get into this threatened state, please make note that your partner and the person you have next to you is aware of these passive polite behaviors that you may end up exhibiting because it can be really really helpful in such scenarios. Here is a video on what tonic immobility

00:55:18

looks like. Just as the second coyote senses that a meal is at hand, her mate appears to have lost his appetite. Most predators need the stimulation of resistance to incite them to kill and the act of killing to induce them to eat. An inert body inspires little interest. >> They're about to put tonic immobility to work. >> Where do you want them? >> Doc shows Mike how to turn the shark upside down. >> I know it's so hard to believe, but it's true. >> Soon, its body becomes catatonic.

00:56:29

I can touch the eyes, bend the dorsal fin, even touch the gills, and there's no response. Adilla. Huh? Hey. I never seen one whisper. [laughter] >> I can't get mine to work for me. >> I'm making a movie. [laughter] >> Okay. [laughter] Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. He bite him. Bite him. [laughter] >> There he goes. He's dead. [laughter] >> Is he breathing? >> Thanks, E. >> [snorts] >> You can >> Yeah. [cough] >> It's amazing how quickly.

00:58:51

The the earlier videos were all on tonic immobility. If you remember what the narrator had mentioned, u an inert body does not elicit the need to kill. This is a response that has been hardwired in the brain for centuries. And that's how several mammals have survived until today. We have the most recent video that we saw was about the dog. Now, why was the dog not reacting in the hands of a man? Maybe he the dog has experienced something with men before. Maybe there is a lot of fear of men in general. And

00:59:38

when this man picks up the dog, every time he touches the dog, the dog pretends to have died. He is completely tonically immobile and because he's in that situation he does not react. He does not react then the predator does not feel the need to kill the animal the minute the dog is returned to its owner. It comes back and it starts b it starts barking at the man. Let's look at how tonic immobility looks like in human beings. This is a video of someone in a roller coaster. I would suggest if you

01:00:18

would like you can reduce the volume uh before listening to this. >> Oh my god, it's so scary. >> Oh my god. Oh my god. >> Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. >> Oh my god. See you. >> OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. [screaming] >> [screaming] >> Oh my god. Oh my [crying] god. Like Oh my god. Oh my god. Like Oh my god. >> Oh my god. Holy. Mike, Mike, >> what are you doing? >> That was better. >> Oh my god. >> You all right? >> Oh my god.

01:01:31

I'm going to kill you. >> I'm going to kill you. Come on. That was way worse. [laughter] That was way worse. >> He did it good. That was a good one. That was a real good one. [laughter] >> Oh my god. [laughter] >> She was so scared. >> That was a good one, man. Thanks, Oh, what happened during this whole tonic immobility part of it? If you noticed his facial response, he was completely frozen. There was no muscular movement in the jaw. There was no blood flow into that

01:02:27

area. He could not even close his mouth. He could not even do anything. In some parts of the video there were some eye movements but in majority of the parts there was no eye movement during the tonic immobility situation. He did not come back into the situation until some until his partner ended up tapping on him. Now that is a very interesting response and I would like you all to note that if you have a partner in a room when you are experiencing tonic immobility the one fastest way to come back into the room

01:03:07

come back into this grounded response into your bo body is by being reminded that whatever you're experiencing is not in the uh present tense in the sense that you are not in danger. So if there is someone else who is tapping you, who is maybe providing you with something that is a cold drink or a hot drink, anything that involves a sensation that you do not think you're going to experience in that moment can help you bringing yourself back into this current scenario. So it could be tapping, it

01:03:47

could be rubbing the back of an individual, it could be a hard u embrace or a hug so that the person can feel grounded into their body. It could be um something like a cup of tea that they are being forced to hold the cup of tea so that the heat from the cup of tea can awaken certain senses. so that they can feel more grounded in the situation. All of these things help the individual come out of this extreme survival reflexes. Now, the rest of these videos involve individuals who are experiencing

01:04:32

collapsed immobility. So, let us check that out. Oh my god. I don't want to [screaming] What the [ __ ] [crying] HAPPENED? [laughter] OH, pick up. Yes. HERE WE GO. READY, GUYS? HANDS UP. COME ON. [screaming] [crying] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] GO. >> [screaming] >> [ __ ] No chance. So this was collapsed immobility. You come in and out of consciousness. Every time you come into consciousness, the things that you're seeing or you're experiencing gets encoded as memories in

01:06:36

your brain. But the minute you go out of consciousness, you're blacked out. Those events are not encoded in your brain. Sometimes individuals may come in and out of consciousness during sexual assault, during any kind of assault. If the individual is experiencing a play or a um or some scene as such, if you notice them going through collapsed immunity uh collapsed uh uh immobility, then you are looking at either them fainting or their body movements are not moving. The limbs are not able to move.

01:07:15

They're not able to stand. their hands are all over the place and you might want to take a break. You might want to call it off and start uh certain procedures that might help the individual calm down and come back into the present. So let's talk about memories. What is the formation of memories in these processes in these experiences? What we have is called a process called as encoding. Encoding is a process by which certain u information from what's happening to you in that situation with

01:08:01

respect to the environment that you're in. All of that information gets consolidated and put in stored memory storage. Sometimes it could be put in long-term memory, sometimes it could be put in short-term memory. It just depends on how salient that information is. These memory store memory boxes are called episodic memories. Sometimes when we have the situation wherein the prefrontal cortex is impaired, we get a lot of fragmented or islands of memory that are being encoded. That is to say, when you

01:08:39

actually go and interview someone who has experienced a traumatic situation, you are not going to get the entirety of what actually happened. You're not going to get all that information out there. So when you see or when you are in scenarios uh wherein you serve as a jury or you are serving as a lawyer or a judge or something like that, please note that when you call sexual assault victims onto the platform, they will not be able to me uh memorize every single thing that is happening. And even if

01:09:14

they do so, it's going to be either fragmented memories or it's going to be memories that do not have time sequences. If they do not have time sequences, it becomes very difficult for people to say first thing A happened then B happened then C happened. For them it could just be ABC or sometimes it could just be A and C. The B couldn't be missing from that whole sequence. So what is being encoded? We have central details. This is what your brain decides to focus on. Your eyes decide to focus

01:09:48

on. Even when you are dissociated, as you saw in that video, you end up focusing on certain things. And when you do end up focusing on certain things, those are the memories that you end up encoding for. If there is a table or a plant or a vase or the traffic noise or the upholstery or something like that. All of these central details are being encoded for. What is not being encoded for is peripheral details. You are not aware of how long did this experience last for. Time sequences are often uh absent from

01:10:28

this episodic memory formation. Reason being is that when that noise goes into a lull, when your brain goes into a lull, you're not able to keep track of time. What your brain requires is a full construction or not just full constru, it's just whatever you think is important in the future so that you may not uh arrive at this situation. And the brain does not really think that much about time in these situations. It's more interested in what was the smell. What did you have uh if you were

01:11:10

eating right before something happened? Uh if you were drinking, what were you drinking right before? What was how cold was the touch on your skin? Uh what was the feel of the carpet when you were on the carpet? uh what color was the couch? Um how were there any flowers in the vase or not? All of these things are what the brain is looking at. And sometimes it is also looking at all of these things in order to ensure that you are not encoding for memories that are harmful and that can carry the potential of PTSD in the

01:11:55

future. So if there is something that is like oh I want to remember who my asalent was. Um there are a lot of people who don't remember how that person even looked like. Why? Because it is a harmful memory for them. So it does not the brain does not allow it does not create this situation wherein you have to encode memories of the face or how tall this individual was what were the clothing that they were wearing. The brain does not allow you to u you know encode for such memories. So it ends up

01:12:33

focusing on things that >> [clears throat] >> uh may be less harmful in nature but still important for the brain to note so that if you were to be in the situation in the future you can avoid the situation. Maybe there is a cat, maybe there is a dog in the house and maybe the whole memory can just uh be of the cat or the dog in the house. Maybe you're not even thinking or you don't even hear the person. Maybe you don't even feel it. There are a lot of times wherein a sexual assault has happened

01:13:08

and the individual is also not feeling anything. And quite some time in the future as well, uh several individuals may still not be able to feel uh anything during sex because there are certain types of memory blockages that are occurring that may prevent you from excitatory pathways that can prevent you from feeling a response down there. So this is what's going on. You are creating fragments of memory. You're creating islands of memory. Especially in situations of collapsed immobility

01:13:53

wherein you go in and out of consciousness. You're creating these kinds of fragmented and islands of memory. You're also having very few peripheral details being coded. Little to no context of time sequences. little to no words or no narratives in this whole memory storage. You can always save this slide for your future use. It's very good for you to understand and keep in mind as to kind of memories that you might be experiencing. So let's what's happened. Uh let's recap. The fear circuitry is now in

01:14:39

control. There is an increased stress response. That increased stress response alters your hypocample functioning. Your hypocample functioning causes fragmented memories. Your fragmented memories may end up uh impacting how your retrieval of your memories happens in the future. Maybe the memories are unpredictable. Maybe the retrieval process itself is unpredictable. Maybe it is in an incomplete memory. Maybe it's a disorganized memory. Let's say your fear circuitry is in control. You have a

01:15:10

bottomup attention that is going on. It will still end up creating fragmented memories. Maybe you have a impaired preffrontal cortex. And if your impaired preffrontal cortex is going on, your amygdala is still being activated. Your amydala is still being activated. At the end of the day, this whole process still involves fragmented memories. Another thing to note is a very recent paper that came out uh in 2026, a few months ago actually uh which looked into the retrieval processes of these memories. And what they looked at

01:15:55

was over time does the memory just disappear? Do you just forget the memory completely or do you forget the retrieval process involved in uh retrieving that memory? And apparently this paper spoke about a lot to do with the retrieval process. So eventually you may forget the retrieval process of retrieving said memories. But sometime sometime it may amount to okay you may hear something maybe a door being slammed shut and all of a sudden that memory just starts floating into your brain. Maybe you smell something and all

01:16:38

of a sudden that memory just pops up in your brain. Maybe someone speaks to you in a very harsh tone that is reminiscent of that particular experience that you have had and immediately you remember those memories. So maybe at some degree we may still uh consciously forget how to retrieve these memories but still on a subconscious level our body our mind is still reacting to certain uh inputs sensory inputs around us that may impact how we have access to this uh retrieval process of these memories.

01:17:24

When we talk about alcohol, uh there are two things. If you're talking about low dose of intoxication, it does not impair the encoding process in the hypocampus, you still end up encoding the same similar kind of things you would have encoded if you were not intoxicated. But if you do have a higher dose of intoxication, it does drastically impact your hypocample encoding of the situation. But it is also context dependent. Now you may experience a lot of blackouts which may also impact this fragments or the

01:18:04

islands of memories that you end up creating. So a little bit more about the processes involved in uh encoding of memories. Um let's say you have a graph [clears throat] over here on the yaxis. You're looking at how much of the information that you're being given is being encoded. Are you going through a super encoding process? Are you going through a normal encoding process? is your encoding process very minimal or not? Uh and on the uh x-axis you have the time sequence. So within the first

01:18:46

few seconds to a minute if you remember we have the detection freeze, we have the shock freeze, we have the no good choices freeze and maybe even dissociation occurring. And in those situations you have a super encoding phase going on wherein a lot of these uh stimuli is being encoded for in your brain sometimes in the short-term memory and is sometimes saved as long-term memory. Why is it being done? So that you can predict what's going to happen in the future. If you can predict what's

01:19:20

going to happen in the future, you may be able to survive cert further situations like this. there's a higher possibility of you surviving these situations. Let's say uh after those few seconds to minutes pass by uh the encoding becomes very very minimal and the reason behind it is also why because your brain has decided how to respond to said situation that is uh unfolding itself. So if your brain has decided to be in a tonic immobility stage or in a collapsed immobility stage, it needs to preserve energy. It

01:20:03

does not know how to respond in the next few seconds or the next few minutes. But at least in that given moment, it can save as much of energy as possible. The other explanation for that is also if you act dead then the chances of the uh perpetrator to feel the need to attack might be less. So if the chances of a uh worst situation occurring is less then it is beneficial for your brain. So if you act dead and if you're still able to survive, if you're still able to stay alive, then that is what your brain is

01:20:45

going to opt for. The brain is constantly trying to help the body to survive. So if that is what the situation is, then the brain is going to opt for something that is going to consume less amount of energy and that is going to have a higher chance of the body and the individual surviving. for all the course handouts here. You can always scan the school code and access it. These are the references for today. Thank you for joining me on this lecture.