Question

Requirements: 3 PAGES. NOTHING LESS.

Corporal Isaiah M. Wright

Corporal Wright is a U.S. Marine serving his tour of duty in Afghanistan. Cpl. Wright is on night patrol in an area known for violent attacks. He has been assigned to the late night shift from 11 pm to 7 am. There are several other men also on duty in various locations around his compound. Cpl. Wright is responsible for alerting his commander of any suspicious activity in his area.

Please write an essay about Cpl. Wright that focuses on the various parts of his brain and what they are responsible for during this shift. You may be creative in your presentation but you must include specific parts of the brain and their specific functions. Use as many of the major brain structures as possible in your narrative.

Be creative and be sure to stay in the first person.

Example from other systems:

I am the human heart. I am located slightly to the left of center of Corporal Wright’s chest.   I am protected by his rib cage. I am a very strong muscle with four chambers. I work twenty four hours a day seven days a week. I have been with this soldier since he was in the womb.

My job is to keep Cpl. Wright alive. I constantly pump blood to all parts of Cpl. Wright’s body in order that it may carry oxygen, nutrition, hormones, chemicals, and other necessary items to all parts of his body including, but not limited to, the brain, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, intestines, and other internal organs, the skin, muscles and bones, etc. I also work closely with the lungs to ensure that the life sustaining function of breathing and heartbeat work at all times. I work under the administration of the brain stem (medulla) and the autonomic nervous system; meaning that I am an involuntary action. Cpl. Wright does not even have to think about me at all. I beat steadily whether or not he is awake. I work a bit harder when he is awake – especially when he is doing physical activity such as lifting heavy boxes of artillery or when he is running for cover. I can also be influenced by hormones such as adrenaline to speed up my rate. Sometimes when the sympathetic nervous system is aroused, such as when Cpl. Wright hears footsteps approaching in the night or bombs going off, adrenaline comes surging toward me with a message to speed up, so I respond. Although I am not truly connected to Cpl. Wright’s emotions, he says that he holds his wife and children with me. In reality his love for them resides in his brain.

Answer 1

Even under the most extreme circumstances, undesirable emotions can be managed. The sports world realized that a long time ago. Elite athletes have benefited from performance psychology for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the U.S. military started to realize that it could be used to enhance battlefield performance, too.

The general thought it was crazy. But Cpl wright being a football player realized there might be some truth to it.

Being the brain I knew that the fear I felt during the Super Bowl was similar I felt during the war. The concept of athletic could be used in military life, the general said. This was quite a thing to grasp but the subconscious already had some insight into it.

I, the brain will walk you through the minset and functioning of a brain during Corporal Wright's warfare. The subconscious will also speak out to better explain some concepts. So let's get you through.

Of course, popular sports haven’t involved deadly combat since the fall of the Roman Empire, but, as Subconscious is quick to point out, “Physiological arousal is physiological arousal.” In other words, on a physiological level, there’s no difference between preparing to free fall from the edge of space and preparing to kick down a door in an insurgent held sector of Ramadi. In both scenarios, I and body kick into survival mode. And in both scenarios, even the most capable minds almost always experience fear.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s an ability to control it, or replace it with something else: anger, compassion, focus, loyalty to a cause greater than oneself. For Corporal Wright, that ability was enhanced by an understanding of how the I and body function under extreme stress. I was able to identify these physiological processes, and knowing that they’re completely normal, I can prevent crippling self-doubt, and thus more fear, from taking hold when Corporal Wright was in warfare.  

I realized that it was better to understand these intricacies of my operation before the war so that the chances of Corporal Wright's success increases.

War begins

I could see soldiers prepare to set off on a patrol into enemy territory. I could see fear interpreted in different ways by my fellow comrades. Some seemed to be pumped up others eaten away by fear.

In the lower abdomen in every human being is a toxic waste site, I knew. I had to send a message to the body to dump that toxic waste before a life and death event, because if there’s trauma to the abdomen that stuff will leak out and infect the wound.

Further on, the troops are in contact. The enemy initiates a complex ambush with an improvised explosive device.

The moment an engagement kicks off, I initiate a dramatic response, beginning with the circulatory system, which immediately shunts blood away from the body surface. This will prepare the Corporal Wright's body to suck up damage.

Preparing to absorb damage, the circulatory system moves blood away from the body’s surface to its core.

It’s called vasoconstriction. Just before the capillaries, there’s a mechanical shutdown of the blood flow, and now the arteries and the body core are holding up to twice as much blood. Corporal Wright's face went white due to this.

I had to do this because, one, it will help prevent bruising, which is what happens when the capillaries and veins burst from blunt force trauma. If there’s no blood, they remain intact. But more importantly, the redirected blood flow will help Corporal alive long enough to finish the fight.

“Imagine it’s 5,000 years ago and a wolf is chewing on your arm,” says Brain. “You’re caving its head in with a rock. Protecting your tribe. He can practically shred that arm and not get to the artery. You won’t bleed out in the heat of battle.”

When confronted with death, the midbrain kicks into high gear. “There’s a dog inside every one of us,” says Brain. The death of a comrade is the ultimate nightmare scenario for not just Corporal but any of the comrades, but while the heart grieves, the midbrain — the portion of the central nervous system that helps coordinate sensory information with simple movements and also controls alertness will kick into high gear.

Before Corporal saves someone else he has to take care of himself. This is the responsibility of midbrain who takes the responsibility of making Corporal realize the fundamental law of survival i.e. saves yourself first before preserving others.

Blood drains from my rational control center, leaving the midbrain in full control, at which point, Corporal can focus on what he had trained to do.

That’s because, at its most extreme, vasoconstriction affects the brain, too. As the blood drains from the face, blood drains from the forebrain, and there’s no rational thought. Brain explains. “I call that ‘condition black.’ And at condition black, the midbrain is in charge, and you’ll do what you’ve been trained to do — no more, no less. You will do what you’ve been programmed to do — no more, no less.”

Thus, if Corporal Wright reaches condition black and lacks adequate training, there’s a good chance he will freeze up. A well-trained soldier, like Corporal Wright, on the other hand, will likely take action to neutralize the threat. “Given a clear and present danger, with today’s training almost everyone will shoot,” Brain says.

Under high stress, the nerve connecting the inner ear and myself had to be shut down, resulting in temporary hearing loss, or “auditory exclusion.”

This phenomenon is called “auditory exclusion,” and it’s a result of the nerve that connects the inner ear and me shutting down in the heat of battle. As I recall the training specialists said, " 90% of combat soldiers report having experienced auditory exclusion. “You get caught by surprise in an ambush. Boom. Boom. Boom. The shots are loud and overwhelming. You return fire, boom. The shots get quiet, but you’re still getting hearing damage.”

Corporal Wright experienced tunnel vision. “The charging lion is like a heat-seeking missile. He locks onto one target and never let go,” says Brain. “That’s tunnel vision.” I immediately recalled.

There is another phenomenon involving vision that is widely disputed, but which I insist is real, and that’s the experience of what he calls “slow-motion time.”

“I have had hundreds of my comrade tell me they can see the bullet in combat,” Brain says. “Many have been able to later point to where the bullet hit, and they could not have done that without tracking the bullet with their eyes. Not like the matrix. It’s like a paintball, where the bullet is slow enough you can track it with your eyes.”

Irrational thoughts often motivate Corporal to take action. The mind of a wounded Corporal often envisions possibilities in the form of irrational thoughts or even hallucinations. This isn’t a psychotic episode, Brain explains. It’s a survival mechanism.

“There was this police officer in Florida,” Brain says. “She was shot 10 times, and in the middle of this gunfight she says to herself, ‘I’m getting married in six months and you’re not going to stop me.’ And she killed the two bastards who shot her. She was back on the job a year later. So, yes, these are irrational thoughts, but at the same time, they’re motivating thoughts.”

Survival euphoria is the brain’s natural response to having made it through a life or death situation alive.\The fact that somebody is trying to kill you is bad enough without your mind and body doing weird and wonderful things. But if you’ve been warned about them, they won’t blindside you.”

“There are many ways people respond to combat, and there are many ways people respond to killing, and they’re all okay,”

One response is what he calls “survival euphoria” — the feeling of euphoria experienced after a life-or-death event, like an intense firefight. “It’s the body’s natural response: I’m alive. It’s the satisfaction of hitting the target like you’ve been trained to do under the stress of combat. You stopped a deadly threat. You saved your own life. You saved other lives. It’s okay to feel really good about it.”

The war is over but is it.

On a physiological level, something else happens after a battle that can prove fatal if soldiers aren’t prepared for it: The body relaxes and blood flow begins returning to normal.

“You’re finally triumphant. You’ve caved the wolf’s head in. You won the battle. Then you relax and bleed out and die. So, it’s important to remember that the body will always backlash in the opposite direction. The wound that didn’t bleed out in the heat of battle will gush blood afterward. That’s why today we immediately slap a tourniquet on the wound. People need to understand the importance of that.”

“When you’re a kid, how many times do you touch a hot stove?” Brain says. “One time. You touch it, scream, and a powerful neurological pathway is established. The midbrain says, ‘Don’t ever touch that stove again.’ But someone trying to kill you in combat is vastly more traumatic. And, as with the hot stove, this whole network of neurons is established and, unless you’ve been warned, you don’t even know it’s there. Then you hear a loud bang and your heart is pounding and you’re gasping for air. We warn people that the puppy may come for a visit. We warn people that they might re-experience all the intensity, fear, and physiological arousal of the event. It can turn into PTSD if you don’t deal with it properly, but by itself, it’s not PTSD. It’s normal. It’s okay.”

Many combat veterans have a tendency to avoid talking about war. Or, when they do, they speak about it in vague or dismissive terms. That’s natural. The brain simply doesn’t like revisiting traumatic events. But attempting to bury those hard memories only gives them strength, Brain explains.

On the heels of combat deployment, many, if not most, soldiers develop a deeper appreciation for the relative calm and comfort of civilian life. The thought of having to go back “over there” is almost unbearable. But that’s not always the case. Some soldiers like Corporal Wright, even those who’ve experienced the worst of combat, find themselves missing the battlefield. According to the subconscious, there’s nothing unusual about that.

“You tap into that primordial model of the sheepdog, and there are people who continue to seek that, and there’s no shame in it,” Subconscious says. “I knew a comrade who served several tours in Vietnam. He said it was the greatest experience of his life. A lot of guys were forced to go to Vietnam, but, aside from a few exceptions, nobody was forced to go a second time. They went again because they wanted to because it was a highpoint in their life. There’s nothing wrong with that. We need those people, and they need to be able to be proud of who they are and what they did.”

Source

Adam Linehan,2016, This your brain on War, Task Purpose,https://taskandpurpose.com/this-is-your-a-on-war