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These frontal areas communicate directly with the amygdala and, in light of appraisal, may reduce or magnify the amygdala's fear response. If you glimpse what looks like a snake, long before your younger frontal areas have had time to determine it is a stick, the old thalamus-amygdala system will have evoked fear.
The amygdala is one of the best-understood brain regions with regard to differences between the sexes. The amygdala is larger in males than females, in children aged 7 to 11, [17] adult humans, [18] and adult rats. [19] There is considerable growth within the first few years of structural development in both male and female amygdalae. [20]
Besides memory, the amygdala also seems to be an important brain region involved in attentional and emotional processes. First, to define attention in cognitive terms, attention is the ability to focus on some stimuli while ignoring others. Thus, the amygdala seems to be an important structure in this ability.
In evolutionary psychology, people often speak of the four Fs which are said to be the four basic and most primal drives (motivations or instincts) that animals (including humans) are evolutionarily adapted to have, follow, and achieve: fighting, fleeing, feeding and fucking (a more polite synonym is the word "mating"). [1]
However, this definition and theory of biological basis is not universally accepted. There are many conflicting theories of personality in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, and neuroscience. A few examples of this are the nature vs. nurture debate and how the idea of a 'soul' fits into biological theories of personality. [2]
The amygdala is known to have a role in the "fight-or-flight response", and the hippocampus functions to form memories of the stimulus and the emotions associated with it. [13] The role of the BNST in the acoustic startle reflex may be attributed to specific areas within the nucleus responsible for stress and anxiety responses. [ 12 ]
The amygdala plays a key role in emotional processing especially fear, and amygdala function appears to be emotionally lateralized. When people are shown fearful faces the left amygdala and left periamygdaloid cortex increase in activation. There also appears to be a greater increase in neural activity in the left amygdala corresponding to an ...
In fear conditioning, the main circuits that are involved are the sensory areas that process the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, certain regions of the amygdala that undergo plasticity (or long-term potentiation) during learning, and the regions that bear an effect on the expression of specific conditioned responses.