Page 26 - Advance Copy: Todd Kaufman, Author

TODD KAUFMAN
them noticed a rustle in the bushes. Larry, the ever-cautious caveman always on the alert for danger, had brought his club with him that morning. Brad, not the guy to think ahead, was unarmed and moseyed on to pick a few berries.
The rustle in the bush was a tiger. Breakfast plans shifted! Brad became the tiger’s breakfast, and Larry was ultimately able to defend himself.
Fast forward a few millennia and humans became an apex species. An apex species is simply the animal at the top of the food chain – master of the domain, so to speak. Like the great white shark in the ocean, man became the earth’s apex species. Good idea or not, we rule the planet. We never ran all that fast, had huge fangs, a coat of armor or – my favourite form of self-defense, stunk like a skunk – yet here we are at the top. We managed this on account of Larry, not Brad. Brad was breakfast – and as a result we have zero DNA from our sweet-but-not-too-bright caveman. Larry, however, survived, and as a result, was able to have a great big family and pass on his DNA.
Humans evolved a keen ability to scan for and sense danger, and we use our well-developed cognitive skills to run those dangerous future scenarios through our head to prepare for the safest possible outcome. Larry was all over that, therefore so are we!
The region of our brain that is highly tuned to scan for and sense danger is a small almond-shaped segment called the amygdala. This small-but-powerful region has developed since the days of Larry so effectively that, combined with our ability to reason or think (done mostly in the front of our brain called the pre-frontal cortex), it has kept us safe, out of trouble and able to rise to the top of the food chain.
The amygdala is one of the few regions of your brain that is pretty much fully baked and ready to go at birth. Even a newborn child knows fear. Clap your hands or otherwise startle an infant and she will cry. Unfortunately, she does not have the neuronal
2