Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Kim Neely. And this is the trauma informed S L P. This is a podcast where we learn how to promote safety and empowerment and to build resiliency in everyone we know, including ourselves,
Speaker 0 00:00:21 This episode is going to lay the foundations to understand the physiology behind trauma. We learned in episode one, that trauma is a physiological response. So we do need to have some understanding of what that physiological response is. Um, the systems that mitigate it, I feel like that's a good thing for LPs to know, cuz we tend to skip over the amygdala limbic system, the emotional system in our brain on the nervous system level. But it's really important to know if you do any kind of regulation stuff. And it's also really great to know about just as a human quite frankly, because the emotional system plays a pretty big role in our day to day life. And we tend to not really understand a whole lot of it. So I find it very helpful to know about these things, but this is a critical component of beginning to become trauma aware because you need to gain a fundamental understanding of this physiological scientific basis behind what trauma responses are, why they tend to happen.
Speaker 0 00:01:24 What happens to a person's nervous system and body after the trauma as well. So buckle up guys is gonna be fun. It's gonna be a whole lot of like neuroscience. Sweet and I know so much fun. You guys and math physiology lessons, it's like graduate school all over again. Ha <laugh> and I do know that's not, everyone's, uh, most exciting topic let's say, but I actually really love neuroscience and neurophysiology and it's just super fascinating and wonderful for me. And so I did actually take a PhD level, uh, systems neuroscience class at the university of Arizona back in the day. So some of this information's coming from there and other parts are also coming from the trauma informed courses I've taken. So it might be a little bit of a Shan. Is that how you say it? Shan task, like, you know, Sisyphus, the guy who kept rolling a Boulder up a hill and then get roll back down.
Speaker 0 00:02:24 He has to do it again. Right. Um, trying to teach anatomy physiology in like an audio format because visuals become pretty important and you can get pretty bogged down and, and anatomy physiology stuff can get kind of like snooze Fest and boring and like hard to digest. Right. And a lot of people already have this ah, in their head when they think, oh no physiology lesson. You're just going. Oh great. So try not to worry too much. I'm gonna be using a lot of analogies. I'm going to, uh, anthropomorphize a lot of things. So I'm gonna kind of like humanify some of these structures, hopefully making it a little more interesting and always trying to bring it back around to that big picture of why we need to know about some of this stuff. So this is the foundational episode that lays some foundation for the next episode. When we talk about survival mechanisms, which is really where physiology meets trauma essentially is in that survival mechanism response we have. So let's get started.
Speaker 0 00:03:31 This episode is gonna be broken down into two main sections. Um, first we're gonna go through the autonomic nervous system. So essentially starting from the peripheral nervous system that feed into our limbic system in our brain. And then there's gonna be a little bit of a word on the vagus nerve within that section, just so you know, near the end there. And then we're gonna talk about the central nervous systems specifically the mid-brain structures and the higher like neocortical areas are part of our Olympic system. And the main thing I just want you to keep in mind is that as we're learning this sort of base level of this physiology, we're gonna be talking about it as if it's a healthy system, a well balanced, nervous system and a healthy limbic system where all the structures are able to behave optimally and work together and talk to each other with feedback loops and all that kind of stuff. Okay. And I want you to keep that in mind because next episode, when we talk about survival mechanisms, this healthy balance is what gets disrupted with trauma without further ado, let's get going on the peripheral autonomic nervous system. Woo.
Speaker 0 00:04:51 So the key part of the peripheral nervous system that helps us a lot <laugh> is the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is the branch of the system that has the sympathetic and the parasympathetic sides of it, right? This is that nervous system that's in charge of automatic things like the muscle tone you use to sit up in your chair and temperature regulation and all that kind of stuff. So that's our autonomic system. So let's review sympathetic and parasympathetic. You sometimes hear these broken down as sympathetic being the fight or flight mode and parasympathetic being the rest or digest system. Right? So, and that is very true. That's a pretty good summary of what these both do. The main takeaway from this and what I'll mention probably next episode as well is that sympathetic and parasympathetic are always in balance with each other. It's not like a one off one is off and one is on, okay.
Speaker 0 00:05:51 Also we have sensory input from both branches from sympathetic and parasympathetic and we have motor, we have output from both of these systems. So let's talk a little bit about that. So the motor branch in our autonomic nervous system, um, I tend to think of these kind of like the divas, okay. That motor pathway, that outgoing pathways, they are the ones that get all the attention because it's the stuff that we notice in our body, essentially what the output is, is what we notice. Right? So motor sympathetic is what happens when you go into fight or flight. So this is the output that tells your body to speed up your heart rate, decrease your digestion. Okay. So cuz you don't wanna sit there and digest food while you're trying to like run from a bear and it widens your bronchial passages actually. So it helps to make gas exchange more efficient.
Speaker 0 00:06:49 So you can get the oxygen carbon oxide exchange a lot more efficient. It raises your blood pressure. So your blood can get to the tissues and you can do that oxygen exchange really efficiently. And actually it also dilates your pupils so that you get more light into your eyes. So you can see a little better actually. So it kind of heightens your visual system, all of that stuff. So it's it's, it is what it says. It is. It's it's the fighter flight it's the, your body is all alert. You got all this extra energy, you got the adrenaline going in there so that you are ready to take on what you need to take on that is the sympathetic motor. Okay. So the parasympathetic motor is the opposite side of the same coin in terms of sympathetic. Parasympathetic is what helps to slow your heart rate.
Speaker 0 00:07:34 It's gonna lower your blood pressure. It's gonna increase your digestion. Um, and it's gonna constrict your pupils because you don't need that much light coming in. And we all know light over time yields things like cataracts and stuff. So like UV light going straight into your eyes for a long period of time can be kind of damaging. So we don't really want that all the time. Anyone who gets their eyes checked and has the doctor dialect their pupils, you know what I'm talking about? Although that's a very extreme dilation, but you know what I mean? All right. So let's talk a little bit about what these motors sort look like in the real world. So one way to think about this balance, this is going to be kind of an exaggerated example, but I'm gonna use an amusement park as an example. Hey, so let's say you go to amusement park and you ride a roller coaster.
Speaker 0 00:08:17 And um, when you're on that rollercoaster, you're sympathetic dominant for sure. Right? Like you're gonna get that rush of adrenaline and your heart's gonna be racing. You're gonna be like, whoa. Right? And then when you get off that rollercoaster, you still have that rush of adrenaline and you're and your heart rate is still really fast. So maybe you wanna go calm down a little bit, right? So you walk over and you stand in line for like, um, a soda or a water or maybe like a funnel cake or something, you know? And then by the time you get to the end of that line, you're starting to feel a lot more calm. Um, your heart rate is slowed down a lot. Maybe you actually feel a little hungry. You could eat a little bit of that funnel cake, not the funnel cakes are particularly filling, but you know what I mean?
Speaker 0 00:08:57 So your parasympathetic system has kicked in and it helped to calm you down. And now you got your digestive system going and you're able to digest any food you happen to have, right? So this is why like at amusement parks, for anyone who knows little kids, you might have to remind them like we're going to eat after we go on the ride. Right. If you eat before, you're gonna have the sympathetic dominance and then your digestive, system's not gonna be working very well. And that might not go well for anybody. Okay. So that's our motor sympathetic and parasympathetic. Let's talk about the sensory pathways though, because really these are like the power behind the throne. You know what I'm saying? Like this is the stuff that actually gives the information that your brain needs in order to make a good reaction. So without input, we can't really have output, which is very, very true.
Speaker 0 00:09:45 All right. So your sensory sympathetic, this is going to carry information about things that are changing essentially. Um, within the autonomic system, the stuff that it pays attention to, it's gonna give information about stuff that's changed. So if you have a sudden pain somewhere, uh, sensory, sympathetics gonna send that up to your brain. Um, it's gonna give information about sugar levels and your blood. Like if they're getting too lower, they're getting too high. Give information about inflammation. If you suddenly have some inflammation showing up somewhere, that's where we're getting that information. And it's the whole purpose of it. Sympathetic sensory is to kind of sound an alarm like, Hey, stuff is changing. We might need to do something. Okay. Your sensory parasympathetic, this is carrying the information about just regulatory stiff that our body needs to do. And our brain needs to know about. And we are not consciously aware of it at all.
Speaker 0 00:10:44 It's like totally the behind the scenes, like checklist keeping an Excel spreadsheet, making sure everything's just running smooth. Okay. They're just a logistical people, right? <laugh> the bears of the accessories. So this is giving information like, you know, okay, we stored some, uh, sugar from that last meal. We also have these nutrients that we digested, right? Like some of this food has moved forward in our gut. Like that's what the parasympathetic is sending is like just regular old. Here's the current state of the body and here's what we've done. All right. So those two pathways are super important. And I'm gonna have a brief note here on the Vaus nerve because the Vaus nerve is up in all the business. That's the Vegas. But, um, as SLPs, we talk, we think about it more in terms of like swallow and voice, right. That's where we tend to learn about it, but it's actually a very large nerve.
Speaker 0 00:11:44 It's one of the largest nerves in your body. And it has a lot to do with this parasympathetic sympathetic, autonomic nervous system stuff. Remember how the, the name of it means wanderer. That's what Vegas means. Is it wanders? Okay. It is in charge of so much of the sensory information coming from your gut and really most of your torso, quite frankly. So we think of it as swallow there's sensation there for swallow, for sure, for my SL peeps out there in swallow world and dysphagia world, you're definitely, you know, about your sensory, right? And put from the Vegas, cuz that has a lot to do with like cough, right? <laugh> and airway protection. Right. But only 20% of the Vegas nerves fibers are motor 80% of the Vegas. 80% is sensory is information that goes up to the brain. So 80% of the fibers of the Vegas and it carries both parasympathetic and sympathetic sensory fibers. Okay. And it goes into, up into the brain to let our brain know was up, up in sort of our torso area basically. Okay. So it's not in charge of literally everything, but it does play a really big role, um, especially when it comes to rest and digest or fight or flight. Right.
Speaker 0 00:13:08 Okay. So now we've gone up our peripheral nervous system and we are now sitting in our central nervous system. So we're gonna stop at our mid-brain structures. We just followed those sympathetic and parasympathetic sensory pathways up. And we're gonna talk about our mid-brain structures that play a key role in our emotional system and also in developing emotional memory. And those structures are the amygdala, the hypothalamus and the hippocampus. We've heard about hippocampus, that guy we know it has to do with like semantic memory, right? And amygdala, poor amygdala. It gets a bad rap, but we really need to talk about it because the amygdala is the most connected structure in the mammalian brain. It has the most inputs and outputs to other neurons that travel elsewhere in your brain than any other structure. I think it might only be beaten by the thalamus, which has more to do with being a relay station.
Speaker 0 00:14:07 As far as we know about the thalamus, it mainly just like sends information where it needs to go. But the amygdala, it gets a bad rap because we talk about the amygdalas. The thing that makes us angry, right? That's not the amygdala's job though. The amygdala functions underneath where we're consciously aware of things. So it's subconscious. Okay. It's not where we necessarily just get angry. The amygdala's job in your brain is to place a value on stimuli. It is an appraiser. It's the great appraiser is what I like to call it. Sensory input comes in. The amygdala says, yeah, this is stuff we like, or, mm, Nope. I don't know this sound. This looks like a threat to me. Right? It's not necessarily a binary thing, but it's, it's still placing a value on that input. Okay. That's its actual job and it's a very important job.
Speaker 0 00:14:59 Okay. The thing about of signing value to sensory input is it allows you to make emotional memories and emotional memories you're created because the amygdala has direct connections to our hip hippocampus. So, you know, associate of learning like with Pavlov's dogs, you know, like he rings the bell and the dog salivate, right. Associate of learning is different than emotional memory. And I wanna break that down for you just a little bit this way. So, uh, as far as I understand it, associate of learning is like, if you are a dog and we're, we're going to humanize that dog, the dog is going, who rang the bell? Now I'm hungry. Basically. Like you have a physiological response, it's it associated the bell with hunger, eating food, right. An emotional memory. The emotional memory side of that would be, you hear the bell and you go, Woohoo.
Speaker 0 00:15:47 I love food. Awesome. I wonder if we're gonna have like, like some ground beef today. I don't know. What do you think it's gonna be guys like you get that emotional, like yay food. That's the amygdala part. <laugh> that's the emotional memory part and emotional memory is one of the fastest memory systems in our brain. We conform very strong long-term memory within the emotional memory system between this amylin hippocampal connections really fast. This is why probably that old adage of first impressions really meaning the most or whatever that adage is probably comes more from that because emotional memory could stick for a long time. The other mid Brainin structure, when you talk about that's our amylin hippocampus and how they relate, the next one is the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the one that gets some stuff done. You guys it's like super on it. So think of the hypothalamus as being, you know, um, I'm not those SLPs out there.
Speaker 0 00:16:49 So props out there to my SLPs who are like this, you know, those ones in graduate school who like had all the study guides and got everything done and like could craft and like go to Pinterest and had all the ideas. And they just seemed to never stop. They like have infinite energy. Uh, yeah, I wasn't that person, but <laugh> props to them. I love you guys. Also, it's kinda what the hypothesis is. It's just a doer just gets it done. So the hypothalamus is the endocrine brain. It is the connection between like your nervous system and your endocrine system, your hormonal system. Okay. What the hypothalamus does, what its job is, is it's gonna coordinate functions for basic needs. So like eating, sleeping, your temperature regulation, stuff like that, it kind of coordinates the functions for those things. And it regulates all the hormones in your body by sending out Tropic.
Speaker 0 00:17:43 I believe that's how you say it. Tropic hormones. These are like boss hormones. They're like the ones who are delivering the memo. Does that make sense? So it's like hypothalamus is gonna send out a memo to like the thyroid and be like, Hey a thyroid. We need you to release some of this. And thyroid's like on it. Okay. I'll release that. That's what the hypothalamus is doing. And that's the Tropic hormones are the ones sending out the message that says like, Hey, send, release some of this. Okay. Um, the other funny thing that the hypothalamus does is it selects, it helps to coordinate and select motor patterns for like facial expressions because of the connections to the amygdala. So when a facial express expression arises from like an emotional reaction to something, the hypothalamus is the one that's kind of helping coordinate that, which is also super fascinating.
Speaker 0 00:18:30 All right. So those are our main mid brain structures. Okay. We have the amygdala, that's assigning value. It is the most connected. It's getting all that sensory input from your on and on intersystem is gonna go into the amygdala. It, you know, the amygdala really needs to know everything that's going on and it's gonna assign a value to whether the stimuli is like, yep, this is okay. Or, mm, Nope, sound the alarm. Okay. That's gonna be the amygdalas job. And then the hypothalamus is the one that's gonna get some stuff done. If things need to get done. And also the hippocampus along with its connections to the amygdala due to its direct connections is gonna help encode our emotional memories, which is one of our fastest memory systems in our brain. Stay tuned. After the theme song, I'm gonna add in some content about memory systems in the brain, from my systems neuroscience class, which hopefully is still accurate, but stay tuned. If you're someone who works with cognitive stuff, it might be interesting to hear about like that. There's actually different rates of memory and coding in different systems in your brain. So stay tuned for that. If you'd like that,
Speaker 0 00:19:37 All right, we need to move upward in the brain, out of our mid-brain structures and into our neocortex that like thick with the double C cortex that us humans have. So we're gonna move into our frontal lobe structures. Okay. So here we are, we've followed our sensory input. The amygdala has assigned a value to it. And now that information along with the value gets sent up into our higher cortical areas, which are where we become aware that emotions are happening. So all that stuff between the amygdala and the hypothalamus and the hippocampus, all that stuff happens underneath our conscious awareness. So that stuff just keeps on truck and it keeps doing its thing back there. Conscious awareness happens when things start to arrive in our singulate, particularly our interior singulate area, which is like a medial structure, like pretty much right above our mid brain in our frontal lobe.
Speaker 0 00:20:32 Okay. And do check some links for like a visual on that then anterior singulate and then also Theil is that like other little layer of cortex that's like kind of tucked into our temporal lobe. If you guys remember that, um, you know how there's that little like Fisher and it's like this extra little folds and there's this gap, and then you get a little deeper in there and you got an Inala. Okay. But the anterior ululate in insulin, these guys are like the big bosses of emotion. These are like the CEOs. Okay. So this is where we start to evaluate pain and our facial expressions decision making starts to happen that conscious awareness of decision making. And, um, interesting thing about interior singulate is it has direct connections to brokers area. Now we feel like we're in an area we understand as SLPs, right. Brokers, Hey, I know that brain area.
Speaker 0 00:21:24 So yeah, interior singulate directly connects to brokers area. So without anterior singulate to brokers, we probably wouldn't be very good at like actually being able to tell people about our emotions <laugh> so yeah, it inputs into our, our expressive Lang linguistic output, anterior singulate the other really important thing. Super important thing that the anterior singulate does is it's gonna signal an error between an expected outcome and the actual outcome of a behavior. And it's gonna tell that error to the amygdala. So the anterior singulate and the amygdala are like constantly trading off. They they're like super awesome emotional partners. Okay. Amygdala assigning a value. And if the value is a little off, right, then the anterior signal is gonna be like, Hey, amygdala, you know what? I know you assigned this as this value, but actually that was a bit off. So next time we get that input, let's assign it differently essentially.
Speaker 0 00:22:27 Okay. That's a really critical thing to remember that these mid brain structures are talking to these frontal lobe structures and that they have a back and forth. They have a feedback loop toward each other. That's a really important part of understanding trauma physiology, because that is where the trauma breakdown tends to happen is where that feedback loop has been interrupted. That signaling of an error has been interrupted and the amygdala and the interior singulate might not be partnering up as well. They don't have as great of a working relationship. So in a healthy nervous system, the interior singulate and the amygdala are super awesome partners. They are in communication with each other and they are having a great time and they get along super great. And they're super efficient with their job when you have a healthy, regulated emotional system. Okay. So remember that, cuz we're gonna talk about when it is not so healthy, cuz that's where trauma starts to come into the picture.
Speaker 0 00:23:30 Okay. And I know in talking a lot about the interior singulate when it comes to emotion, but the Insala also plays a role. The interior insulate particularly is part of the limb system and plays a role in our perception of an experience of emotions, as well as like empathy and understanding other people's emotions. Also like understanding other people's facial expressions, things like that seem to be housed more in the Insala, but the, the anterior insular and the interior GY both play a lot of roles in perception of emotion and that kind of thing. And the cautious awareness of what's going on in that area, in that emotional area and helping with decision making and all of that sort of stuff. So, all right.
Speaker 0 00:24:19 So that's it. Woo. We made it through, hopefully you survived my breakdown of the amygdala limbic Shum. We started out learning a little bit about the peripheral piece of the nervous system, specifically the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. And, um, main thing to remember about there is, you know, we have the fight flight and we have the rest and digest the sympathetic being fight or flight parasympathetic being rest and digest. That's a really good way to, you know, sum them up. But in a healthy nervous system, these two systems are constantly trading off. So it's a bit like a, you know, well balanced Seesaw. Okay. A nice gentle back and forth is how these two things work in a healthy well regulated nervous system. Okay. And then we did do a little bit of a of side note on the Vegas nerve because the VA does actually play a big part in that peripheral nervous system aspect.
Speaker 0 00:25:25 And after learning about the peripheral, we talked a little bit about the central nervous system, the amygdala limbic system in the central nervous system. So we talked about those mid brain structures specifically, definitely talking about the amygdala and how it sets a value placement on incoming stimuli. So it tells us whether something's a threat or something's a yay food it's all right. Um, and that's the seat of where we start to form emotional memories because it has a direct connection to our hippocampus. So, um, we learn things emotionally very quickly. Okay. And then also we learned about those frontal cortical areas, those higher that five layer cortex cortical areas specifically in terms of the anterior singulate and how anterior singulate and amygdala are talking to each other a lot in a healthy, nervous system in a healthy limbic system, those frontal areas, those, those consciously aware areas of the brain are aware of what's going on in the body.
Speaker 0 00:26:26 They know how you're feeling and why you're feeling it. Okay. They're kind of checked in on that. And if they aren't aware at some point because of a fight flight or freeze response, they can then become aware later on. So that's a key thing for you to know. So in a healthy limbic system, the anterior singulate and the amygdala are gonna be talking back and forth and the amygdala's gonna be able to get input from the interior. Singulate about, did it make an error in how it placed a value on something? So the main thing, next time, we're gonna focus on the physiology behind that those survival mechanisms and what happens, what makes fight or flight different than a freeze response. And if there's time, we'll talk a little bit more about what happens if a nervous system becomes dysregulated. There's a nice way to think about that. There's a nice model that a lot of mental health professionals use to, to think about that. So I hope you all have a really great week or two, and I hope you do join me again, as we all discover what it means to be trauma informed SLP.
