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Learn to Love Your Amygdala

Your mind has a brilliant capacity to respond to threat instantly and subconsciously. If you think of your brain as a high-functioning control board, receiving and distributing information at an almost inconceivable rate of speed, then the amygdala is the ESC key. Escape! Control-Alt-Delete!

In an Avengers-esque summer blockbuster, the amygdala is that bright red panic button at the far corner of the control panel, shielded by a clear plastic casing that Robert Downey Jr. must smash open with the butt of a fire extinguisher before the earth is demolished by [insert super villain here].

In reality, the amygdala is a pair of almond-shaped emergency responders, each of them…

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 Social whirl of a life? Thank your amygdala

Researchers find almond-shaped clump of nerves in brain is larger in more gregarious people.

Articles of Interest

A study in terror

In the Batman comics there is a superhuman monster which has monstrous and irrational rages. Its name is Amygdala. In reality the amygdala is an almond-shaped piece of the brain that controls our reaction to fear. Whether the lawyer that contacted Joseph LeDoux had read the comic or heard about the research is debatable, but what he wanted to know was could he rest the defence of his client on the premise, "He didn't do it, his amygdala did"?

Amygdala: The powerhouse of emotions

Our brain is a palace of structures. It dictates everything we do, how we think, how we behave and how we feel. In this article, we will focus only on the amygdala (sounds like a character out of a Star Wars movie): From what it is, functions, neurophysiological aspects of the amygdala, what happens if it gets damaged, and its relationship with other brain areas.

How can meditation catalyze relaxation? Ask your amygdala.

So how exactly does meditation decrease stress? On a neurological level, studies have found that the brain’s “fight or flight” region, also known as the amygdala, actually shrinks after consistent meditation. Not only that, but meditation practices have been shown to create connections in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, the regions of the brain that are thought to release tension.

How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature

A growing body of empirical research has demonstrated the cognitive and affective benefits of exposure to natural environments. Spending time in nature can improve working memory capacity, restore directed attention as well as reduce negative emotions and stress.

Humans, Like Animals, Behave Fearlessly Without the Amygdala

Now, scientists have confirmed that a missing amygdala results in similar behavior in humans, according to a study in the journal Current Biology. “There’s not very many humans with this sort of brain damage,” said Justin Feinstein, the study’s lead author and a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa. “Luckily for us, we had access to a patient, SM, and we studied her different fear behaviors and we read her personal diaries.”

Know Your Brain: Amygdala

In addition to its involvement in the initiation of a fear response, the amygdala also seems to be very important in forming memories that are associated with fear-inducing events.

Maybe I just have a lazy amygdala

I'm always interested in findings about what might push some of us to overeat while others seem to be able to naturally balance out how much they take in. A new study points to the amygdala, a part of the brain that is associated with emotions and moods, as playing some sort of role in how satisfied or full we feel.

The Amygdala and its Allies

Your amygdalae are essential to your ability to feel certain emotions and to perceive them in other people. This includes fear and the many changes that it causes in the body. If you are being followed at night by a suspect-looking individual and your heart is pounding, chances are that your amygdalae are very active!

The Decision Maker of your Emotional Brain: Introducing the Amygdala

AKA the tiny, little almond-like figures (there are 2) in the central part of the brain. Tiny, but MIGHTY!

This Guy Had a Piece of His Brain Removed. Now He Can’t Feel Fear

At the end of the seven days, and following a neuropsychological exam, surgeons ultimately decided to target Smith’s temporal lobe: removing the front half of the right temporal lobe, the right amygdala and the right hippocampus before stapling his head back together. Three days after the surgery, Smith was free to leave the hospital. And straight away, he says, he noticed something in him had changed.

Trust is unconsciously determined, thanks to the amygdala: study

The part of the brain responsible for the fight-or-flight response also plays a key role in unconsciously processing a face’s trustworthiness – in a matter of milliseconds.

Understanding Emotions: Origins and Roles of the Amygdala

Emotions arise from activations of specialized neuronal populations in several parts of the cerebral cortex, notably the anterior cingulate, insula, ventromedial prefrontal, and subcortical structures, such as the amygdala, ventral striatum, putamen, caudate nucleus, and ventral tegmental area.

What Makes You Feel Fear?

In shorthand often used to describe the brain, fear is controlled by a small, almond-shaped structure called the amygdala. But it's not quite that simple, as a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience demonstrates. One of the best ways to figure out how parts of the brain work is to study people who have damage in those specific areas. Take a patient known as SM, a middle-aged woman with a rare condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease that has damaged the amygdala on both sides of her brain.

Your Complicated Amygdala: Why Brain-Imaging Work Is Misleading

It's true that the amygdala becomes increasingly active when people are afraid, but that's far from the whole story. The amygdala plays a much broader role in the brain's functioning than merely responding to fear.

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StatPearls

The amygdala has been implicated in many diseases, such as depression, sleep debt and anger, as well as other neuropsychiatric diseases.