Third, the first chapter nearly turned me off to the book. I've very glad I continued reading the book. He is also a family therapist. In this book he looks at part of the brain and his coverage into 5 major parts. The amygdala is a coarse pattern recognition system.
External stimuli go to some other part of the brain as well as the amygdala.
It does so by changing the levels of certain chemicals in the body. Some time after this beings, the left frontal lobe may receive a signal related to the same stimulus that started the amygdala going. The left frontal lobe calms the amygdala. The time response is about half as fast. I think of the description in Emotional Intelligence as how the brain stores and fires survival rules.