In this animation the highest thinking parts of the brain disappear to show the Insula, sitting on top of the hippocampus and the amygdala. This also disappears to show the intense emotions caused by pain and fear generated in the amygdala firing memory storage areas in the hippocampus. When the amygdala turns on in this fashion it decreases the firing of higher, reasoning centers in higher brain centers. It also prevents the experience of pain from being integrated into a person's sense of who they are. The pain always feel like a foreign threat, reinforcing the threat and the trauma.
