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trust. Born in the limbic system, trust originally emanated from the involvement of the emotions of the mind, not from what would be commonly termed a logical assessment. Even with modern humans, trust sometimes seems to derive more from gut instinct than from rational thought. However in complex situations, emotions might be viewed as suspect by analytical observers, but they are nevertheless still a powerful force within the mind when performing some action. It was the next evolutionary step of the mind that offered an enhancement in personal interaction mechanisms. Specifically, this evolutionary step involved the melding of cognitive assessment with emotional reaction in establishing trust. We can illustrate this shift by considering some of the aspects of flying an airplane, particularly a small airplane.

An airplane provides a marvelous platform for the human body to be suspended within three-dimensional space. By placing the body in an enclosure that is then set into motion within an airframe whose primary purpose is to counteract the natural forces on the human body, a result is achieved in which the sensory input of the body to the mind can be suspect. The mind is used to receiving sensations of sight, sound and equilibrium to establish an understanding of orientation and direction. In an airplane subject to certain conditions, for example an overcast, hazy day, perhaps towards twilight, the visual inputs through which an understanding of equilibrium is established become very suspect. In fact, they can become erroneous; the airplane can be inverted and the pilot may not recognize it. The results can be disastrous unless a pilot is able, because of training, to disregard the trust that would normally be placed in the physiologically derived sense of equilibrium and instead rely completely on the instrumentation of the airplane. The message of the training is to become essentially counter-intuitive. Do not trust what you think you feel or what you think you see outside the plane. Instead, trust the instruments to tell you about your orientation, your altitude, your airspeed and your direction of flight. Trust the instruments to tell you whether you are climbing or descending, or whether you are turning or in straight, level flight. Then, base your decisions on what your instruments are telling you, not what your elementary senses are telling you. In essence, we learn through proper provisioning of the mind to offset the derivation of trust through primarily emotional reaction with a stronger portion of cognitive assessment.

The Human Brain

The mind within the brain provides protection to the individual through a multi-layered collection of processes, honed through evolutionary selection to give a person an edge up in warding off danger in its many guises. The third subsystem of MacLean’s triune brain paradigm is the neocortex, the most recently evolved portion of the human brain. It comprises a sheet of organic material perhaps one square meter in area and about 3 millimeters thick that forms the outer layer of the cerebrum. This part of the brain includes a variety of lobes that we briefly discussed in Chapter 4. For the less technical observer, the distinguishing features of these lobes are the gyri and sulci, the pronounced ridges and furrows that allow the packing of this layer of material into the confined space of the skull. It is these features that we associate with images of the brain. The neocortex can be explored through reference to cranial accidents, diseases and surgery; in particular, the lobotomies performed in the middle of the last century. More recently, new technologies enabling advanced imaging as well as the comparative studies regarding humans and animals have significantly augmented this exploration.

Cognition is the collective result of the mechanisms and processes through which the brain learns about itself, its surrounding environment and how it manifests this information in the form of comprehension and action that it derives from activities of the brain. The neocortex associates

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