Ted Talk Summaries #1

    Recently I was watching a Ted talk yesterday morning, it’s called “The effect of trauma on the brain and it’s behaviours”.

You can click on the video to watch it, I personally found it quite refreshing! The Ted Talk speaker here is John Riggs, it took place at  TedxAugusta in 2015. It amazed me how he was able to become a physician in his 40’s.


    In this video you can see how he goes on to explain his research and experience with soldiers/trauma patients, he explains how there are two parts of the brain he will talk about. One part is the cortex which is responsible for the rational, thinking, reasonable brain. The other is what he refers to as the primitive or “animal brain” the brain stem. This is because it is more your survival instinct or reaction part of the brain.  He goes on to give an example, "your wife asks you to take out the trash, while you do that she notices the kids made a big stain on the new couch, she goes on to get irritated and angry. When you come back, you can see in her face and body posture/tone of voice she has taken a more hostile appearance."

•     "Immediately as she takes her anger out on you, your “animal brain” might think to attack back, to shout and get into an argument. You were perfectly fine and all of a sudden you are being shouted at for no reason you know of. But the reasonable side to you, your “Cortex” thinks “baby calm down, it’s ok. We made a vow to take care of each other when we got married, I love you”. It can distinguish between what has made her angry and what she is reflecting onto you. However, our immediate reaction is usually human instinct to lash out in defence, especially if you have less patience. Your brain makes you react faster rather than to think it through first.

•    You can see more in the video for specifics, but to sum up the takeaway from this “Ted Talk”, he goes on to explain how this animal instinct is crucial and really beneficial in war, when soldiers are in a place where everyone is out to get them and will kill them if they are not constantly being aware of dangers. But the primitive brain “The brain stem”... what happens when you take that soldier back home? To their home country, and out of a war zone. Their primitive part of the brain, the brain stem, does not recognize geography, it’s survival brain is “Overstimulated”. Same for a child who grew up in a very abusive environment, when you take them out of that environment, they may be happy or really want to improve and feel safe, but their brain needs to re-adjust from constantly watching behind your back, to knowing to rationalize and not react first. It can be hard and require outside help.

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   He goes on to explain, ways you can get better, he encourages for soldiers he works with Physiotherapy, yoga, meditation, he vouches for exercise and it’s positive effects, meditation which is clinically proven to help calm the brain and be more in control of it, as comes with more practice you can start to calm thoughts or reactions more.

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   He also says that instead of medicating soldiers who have physical pains caused by stress, such as neck pain, back pain, migraines, etc he prescribes them holistic approaches. Dr. John Riggs does not give them pills but instead focuses on getting to the root of the problem and help with the stress or other focusing factors. "To treat the direct cause and not the symptoms." "It's not rocket science", he says.

• ↠🔼He does not refer this advice of not taking pills to people who "have" to take medicine such as with mental illness or other illnesses where there is an in-balance in the brain chemistry, but instead refers this other natural holistic treatments and approaches to soldiers and patients that have hyperarousal and hyper stress (brain stimulation) and stress hormones that can go on to cause stiffness in the neck, headaches or other symptoms. Therefore physical therapy, stretches, and devices such as heating pads, will help them much more as soldiers then taking pills that can also have side effects.

    To conclude this is the message he sends across, explaining trauma, different parts of the brain and how they react to stimulation which can be shouting, or gun sounds, bombs in war and then going back to a normal life, or any other type of life trauma and it’s side effects. What you can do to help it, and so on. He finishes off the video with a bonus! Explaining; before he became a physician, he was actually a "Professional Guitar player" and musician. So he goes on to end the Ted talk with an awesome guitar solo he plays! It was super cool to listen to and watch him play the guitar, after such an impressive speech. He mentions he plays this performance in tribute to all the soldiers he has had the honour to work with, and the soldiers that help him and many others have their freedom in his country.


Feel free to watch the video! I really recommend it, he is a good speaker, explains things really easily and he is quite funny too. Enjoy!