Cognitive, Emotional & Physiological Responses To A Threat

Over the past ten years writing this blog, I’ve covered many subject areas, including the startle reflex, adrenaline, the “high and low road” processing of threats etc., however I’ve never joined them up to present a more complete picture of how they interrelate to each other. In this article I want to try to explain the different cognitive, emotional, and physiological processes that are at play when somebody throws an unexpected punch at you. Hopefully this will help give us a better idea of how we can expect ourselves to respond when these things happen, and not over-estimate our abilities at dealing with such surprise attacks.

Depending on the way the punch is thrown, the first thing that is stimulated is our flinch or startle reflex, which will see us bring our hand/arm up to attempt to intercept the strike that is being delivered to our head. At the same time, we are likely to bend our knees, and raise our shoulders up whilst we pull the neck down in an attempt to bury – and protect - our head. It is important to note that at this point we haven’t consciously identified that we are being attacked, we are simply reacting to the movement. Without delving into the depths of cortical visual processing, there is some debate as to how the eye processes this movement. To some degree the stimulus/information gets split into two streams/networks: dorsal and ventral; the dorsal handling the “action”/reflex component, and the ventral, the perception and understanding of what is going on. At this point the eye has just received the information and is passing the relevant information on to the “brain”. We should not underestimate the complex processing power of the eye and its capability to think on its own, as it were. There are some people who think that adrenaline is responsible for powering the startle reflex however it is the ATP energy system that is at work here. ATP is stored in the muscles to provide energy for such quick and sudden movements, whilst the other “slower to start” energy systems (anaerobic and aerobic etc.) are able to catch up e.g., an Olympic sprinter’s initial power off the blocks, and perhaps for the first 60 meters or so is powered by the ATP system (this is why sprinters who false start are at a severe disadvantage to their fellow competitors as they have already expended some of their ATP before the real start of the race begins).

Information is now sent to the Thalamus. Without over-complicating things, the Thalamus is the first “decision maker”, which decides what to do with the information it has received from the “eye”, and it decides to do two things in parallel: it sends information to the Amygdala, and at the same time to the Sensory Cortex. This is sometimes referred to as the “low road” and the “high road”, and can be thought of as a “better safe than sorry” process. The Amygdala is going to make a quick and dirty decision based on very limited information about what needs to happen next, whilst the Sensory Cortex and the Hippocampus (in that order – the Hippocampus plays a significant role in memories) are going to take a little more time to try and process what is actually going on. Imagine you are walking in the woods, where it is covered in leaves, and you suddenly feel something move beneath your feet (there isn’t really a natural reflex response for this), so your Thalamus quickly sends a message to your Amygdala, your Amygdala recognizes this could be potentially dangerous (a snake moving, ground giving way etc.), and sends information via the Hypothalamus, that instructs your body to jump back – this all happens subconsciously. As all this is going on, your Sensory Cortex and Hippocampus are trying to make better sense of the “supposed” threat to work out whether it is genuine and still dangerous, or whether you can stand down – this information is then sent to the Amygdala so it can make a more “informed” response i.e., “Yes”, the punch constitutes a real threat/danger. The Hypothalamus in both cases is going to trigger the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS).

Our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is comprised of sub-systems, two of which are the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). The Sympathetic Nervous System increases and heightens functions and responses, such as increasing heart rate, converting glycogen to glucose (to provide energy once the ATP has been expended), and dilating the Bronchi to increase breathing capabilities etc. The Parasympathetic Nervous system brings everything back to normal, such as reducing heart rate etc. The SNS is quick to activate and the PNS slow to regulate, which is why when you have received a fright, it takes some time to feel calm again. When there is an “Acute Stressor” such as an attempted punch to the head, the Sympathetic Nervous System is triggered, which starts to stimulate the Adrenal Medulla, causing Adrenaline/Epinephrine to be released. At the same time the heart and breathing rate are increased. The released Epinephrine bind to liver proteins, which results in glycogen becoming glucose – an easily consumed, ready and powerful energy source. As we become adrenalized our emotional state starts to change, and largely because of this we start to understand that we are in danger e.g., we start to either feel fearful or angry etc. This understanding, coupled with the information that the Sensory Cortex and the Hippocampus have processed, give us our first real conscious awareness of what has happened i.e., somebody has tried to punch us. We now have to decide what to do i.e., we have to cognitively evaluate our potential responses and reach a decision – and hopefully this is where our training starts to kick in.

In just under a thousand words I have attempted to explain what is going on when we experience a surprise attack, such as someone throwing a haymaker to our head. This explanation is obviously devoid of nuance, and has been extremely simplified, not because I believe its above anyone’s head but rather because it is sometimes easier just to think of the Hippocampus as being responsible for “memory storage” rather than getting caught up in how memories are actually stored, encoded, retrieved etc. Hopefully, having a basic understanding of what goes on when we experience a threat/attack can help us realize how much our brains and bodies do to help us deal with the initial assault, and that there does come a moment when we have to be able to consciously respond to the situation we are dealing with, and that even with good training, we will experience a huge degree of pressure and uncertainty in that moment. If we have too high an expectation of ourselves we will probably find that we are unable to do the things we were told, and believed, that would come naturally to us, such as simultaneously attacking as we block etc. This does not mean that such techniques and strategies are not relevant, but to think that we will always do them when surprised may be asking a bit too much of ourselves.