President Obama waded into the national race debate in an unlikely setting and with an unusual choice of words: telling daytime talk show hosts that African-Americans are “sort of a mongrel people.”

Obama noted "there's still a reptilian side of our brain" that leads people to not trust others "if somebody sounds different or looks different."

Originally posted by bentai22


I find this interesting in the fact that the Prez is jumping on the bandwagon. One other thing I find interesting is that he refers to our "reptillian" brains. Does he know something that we dont?

I wonder what he means by the reptillian sides of our brains? Were we possibly derived from the reptillian race?


thehill.com
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Wikipedia - 'Triune brain'

The triune brain is a model of the evolution of the vertebrate forebrain and behavior proposed by the American physician and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean. MacLean originally formulated his model in the 1960's and propounded it at length in his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution [1]. The triune brain consists of the reptilian complex (<-- See Below), the paleomammalian complex (limbic system), and the neomammalian complex (neocortex), viewed as structures sequentially added to the forebrain in the course of evolution. The triune brain hypothesis became familiar to a broad popular audience through Carl Sagan's Pulitzer prize winning 1977 book The Dragons of Eden. Though embraced by some psychiatrists and at least one leading affective neuroscience researcher[2], the model never won wide acceptance among comparative neurobiologists. Comparative evolutionary neuroanatomists currently regard its claims about brain evolution to be outdated [3] [4].

The reptilian complex
The reptilian complex, also known as the R-complex or "reptilian brain" was the name MacLean gave to the basal ganglia, structures derived from the floor of the forebrain during development. The term derives from the fact that comparative neuroanatomists once believed that the forebrains of reptiles and birds were dominated by these structures. MacLean contended that the reptilian complex was responsible for species typical instinctual behaviors involved in aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays.