ialdabaoth

Mr. Hanks, which version of Quantum Mechanics do you believe is more likely to be an accurate interpretation of reality - the Copenhagen statistical interpretation, the Everett-Wheeler "many worlds" model, or the Penrose "consciousness causes collapse" viewpoint?

How much do you know about the human brain?

To use a metaphor:

Your brain has a bunch of different parts to it - three of those parts are called the "neocortex", the "amygdala", and the "cerebellum".

Neo's a smooth operator, and always has a plan if you just give him a few damn minutes to think about it.

Amy's prone to freak-out, and tends to solve everything by either hitting it REALLY hard, or running away from it REALLY fast (aka fight-or-flight).

The cerebellum is like the driver's seat for the body. The way Amy and Neo work is, Amy sits in the driver's seat with her hands on the wheel, and Neo sits shotgun with all our maps and mission specs in his lap. With me so far?

So, when you're having a freak-out, what's basically happening is Amy has gone bugshit and is slamming on the gas, spinning the wheel and bugging the fuck out NOW, while Neo's sitting in the passenger seat shouting something about minefields and going off-mission and how bad the CO's gonna yell at us when we get back to base.

In an ideal brain, Neo's got one more stripe than Amy, and Amy respects the chain of command. What you've got in PTSD is a broken chain of command, because one time Amy followed Neo's orders and things got REALLY crazy, so now when things look like they're about to get crazy Amy doesn't trust Neo's orders anymore.

And you can't just put Neo in the driver's seat. Check out this picture:

http://mybrainnotes.com/amygdala-prefrontal-cortex.jpg

The "prefrontal cortex" is Neo, and the "amygdala" is Amy. That weird looking tree-thing in the bottom back is the cerebellum. Neo just flat-out can't reach the cerebellum without going through Amy.

So, you're going to have to fix your brain's chain of command. You're going to have to work out some system to remind Amy to listen to Neo, BEFORE Amy decides that Neo's full of shit and she's bugging them out of there.

This will take a LOT of time and effort, but remembering that it's a chain of command issue should help.

Is it weird that this whole thing reads like a bad attempt at viral marketing?

I'm glad to help!

What you need to do now is, get yourself to a therapist who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It's basically like kicking Amy and Neo back into Command Training exercises until they prove they can work together as a functional team again.

Well, the problem with that is "accepting that the situation was normal given the context" is Neo's job, and Amy doesn't trust Neo's judgment anymore.

Neo is called the "Neocortex" because it's the stuff that humans have that animals don't (or at least, don't have as much of). The Amygdala is part of the "animal" brain, so good luck teaching it anything too complex for your dog to understand.

Basically, what you need to do is teach Neo to make better decisions, and teach Amy when to shut up and give Neo a few minutes to think. These are separate training tasks, and both are pretty damn intensive.

On the other hand, there are some promising drugs coming out, which basically use chemicals to accomplish what you just described. But we have no idea how well they work or what the side effects are, so we're still doing trials on animals to make sure they don't rot people's brains or turn them into Reavers or something else horrible.

Here's an article about it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2195982/Drug-stop-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-way-successful-test-mice.html

Btw, thanks for the gold, somebody!