The Three-Floor Brain
2:34
Companion Slides
Dan Siegel's hand model: brainstem, limbic system, and cortex — and what happens under threat.
Key Concepts
- Ground floor (brainstem): breathing, heartbeat, survival instincts
- Middle floor (limbic/amygdala): emotions, the brain's 'smoke detector'
- Top floor (cortex): thinking, planning, language, decision-making
- Under threat, the top floor goes 'offline' — we lose rational thought
- 'Flipping your lid' — when the thinking brain disconnects
Part of
Module 1: Foundations
What trauma is, how it works in the brain, what the ACE study tells us, and why resilience matters.