In other words, Foley argues that individuals "know" at any present moment only through how their previous experiences of the environment, whether concrete or abstract, constrain the way they experience the present moment, a process Maturana and Varela (1991, as cited in Foley) call "structural couplings" (or paired connections⁷) within the nervous system's "operational closure" (p. 10, 11). Thus, Foley's enactionist view of cognition as "an expression of structural couplings" poses that the "'environment' cannot specify changes in the nervous system … it can only trigger them… Instead of representing an independent world, they [living systems, of which humans are but one,] enact a world as a domain of differences" (p. 11). In enactionist terms then, the body and brain do not need language or mental representations to act upon knowledge gathered by the senses. For example, through complex and interactive negative feedback systems, the autonomic nervous system regulates heart and respiration rates in response to both environmental and internal stimuli without any conscious awareness. The parasympathetic branch controls their rates under usual circumstances, and more pertinent to this discussion, the sympathetic branch controls or directs heart and respiratory rates when confronted by danger (Seeley, Stephens, & Tate, 1995). Therefore, this subconscious processing of data leading to the perception of danger can in part explain how a person can experience abuse and claim no memory of it⎯precisely because no language is required for a “decision” to run from a threat or stay and fight.