MEET Your Brain

THINK OF THIS ORGAN AS YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM, a miracle of efficiency with billions of nerve cells that coordinate everything from eye blinks to emotions. Whether you're making coffee or answering a text, your brain takes in information from multiple sources, then deciphers the data in an instant so you can act.

- ARRICCA ELIN SANSONE

Let's say you spot an unfamiliar snake in your garden (Eek!). Your heart pounds, your breathing speeds up, and your blood pressure rises in a fight-or-flight response. That's the amygdala, the brain's emotional center, reacting to a perceived threat. "The amygdala responds to stimuli in the environment," says Avram Holmes, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers University.

"It's a detection system, but it doesn't function in isolation." Instead, there's a feedback loop. In milliseconds, "other parts of your brain come online to decide how to respond," Holmes says. When you realize the "snake" is a stick (Phew!), the prefrontal cortex, in charge of decisionmaking, interprets the situation and sends "all is well" chemicals back to the amygdala and your body calms down. All this happens without any conscious effort from you.

Mission control