How the Amygdala Works

The amygdala detects important features of the environment and it can trigger the fight or flight response. This brain region used to be thought of as the brain’s ‘fear center’ or sometimes as the emotional core of the brain, but in recent years neuroscientists have discovered that the amygdala’s function is more general. It now appears that the amygdala’s function is to detect important and relevant features of our sensory experience, and it activates most strongly when those features are unexpected. More specifically, the amygdala can be thought of as a prediction error detector which is sensitive to things that are biologically relevant and/or important for the task at hand.

This video explains how the amygdala works, including a discussion of amygdaloid nuclei anatomy, how the fight or flight response works and how the amygdala triggers it, how the amygdala can be “hijacked” and lead us to doing things we later regret, and how we can calm our amygdalae if we experience the amygdala hijack often.

Chapters
00:00 The amygdala detects important features of the environment
00:26 Is the amygdala the fear center?
01:15 Anatomy of the Amygdala
02:31 Information flow through the amygdala
04:04 Fight or flight response and the amygdala
06:54 Amygdala hijack
08:43 The amygdala's function is about more than stress and fear
09:49 The amygdala and biological relevance prediction error signal
14:20 Calm your amygdala

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Book recommendations (for calming the ‘amygdala hijack’ response):
Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger https://www.amazon.com/Rage-Step-Step...
Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind...

References:
Ferrara, N. C., Vantrease, J. E., Loh, M. K., Rosenkranz, J. A., & Rosenkranz, J. A. (2020). Protect and harm: Effects of stress on the amygdala. In Handbook of behavioral neuroscience (Vol. 26, pp. 241-274). Elsevier.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin.
Daniel Goleman's explanation of "amygdala hijacks" (   • Daniel Goleman's explanation of "amyg...  )
Iordanova, M. D., Yau, J. O. Y., McDannald, M. A., & Corbit, L. H. (2021). Neural substrates of appetitive and aversive prediction error. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 123, 337-351

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Thanks for your time and I hope you have a great day.
Andrew

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