The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

by Bruce D. Perry

all of that previously stored experience has laid down the neural networks, the memory “template,” that you now use to make sense out of any new incoming information. These templates are formed throughout the brain at many different levels, and because information comes in first to the lower, more primitive areas, many are not even accessible to conscious awareness.

we offload perceptions of things we consider normal: so that we can rapidly react to things that are aberrant and require immediate attention.

One of the most important characteristics of both memory, neural tissue, and of development, then, is that they all change with patterned, repetitive activity. So, the systems in your brain that get repeatedly activated will change, and the systems in your brain that don’t get activated won’t change. This “use-dependent” development is one of the most important properties of neural tissue.

Fear quite literally makes us dumber, a property that allows faster reactions in short periods of time and helps immediate survival.

During dissociation, the brain prepares the body for injury. Blood is shunted away from the limbs and the heart rate slows to reduce blood

we tend to prefer the “certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.”

Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was trust, and trust comes through forming healthy working relationships. People, not programs, change people.

Our brains adapt to our environments,

The brain is an historical organ, a reflection of our personal histories. Our genetic gifts will only manifest themselves if we get the proper types of developmental experience, appropriately timed. Early in life these experiences are controlled primarily by the adults around us.