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Amygdala Research Paper

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The Amygdala’s Role in Experiencing Fear
By: Muhammad Talha Moazzam, PS 101 A9, December 14 2014
Introduction:
Fear is one of the most basic and powerful emotions that animals, including human beings, possess. Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. If a fear becomes so great that it starts interfering with a person’s daily life, it could mean that the person is suffering from a fear or an anxiety disorder.
Research on emotion has become a popular topic as a result of the successful discovery of the mechanisms involved with the expression of fear (LeDoux, 1998). One of the most repeatable findings is the fields of psychology and neuroscience is that the amygdala, …show more content…

For all categories presented, she always rated at the lowest level and her PANAS-X score for fear was extremely low as well but she did experience other emotions (Feinstein et al. 2010). Despite the lack of comparative data, the patterns observed indicated that SM could not experience fear at all (Feinstein et al. 2010). The fact that SM failed to fear such a variety of fear inducing things could make one believe that she just never encountered such stimuli during the critical period of her life. However that was not the case, as when she was questioned, she recalled several events that fit into the fear inducing category. These included being held on gunpoint, almost being killed in a domestic violence incident, death threats etc (Feinstein et al. 2010). Further investigation of her background led to the discovery that she was from an area where a lot of criminal actions took place and her lack of understanding of fear caused her to be the victim of several criminal incidents. SM reported not being scared during these events but she did feel angry and upset (Feinstein et al. 2010). Coming out of such harsh conditions unscathed led the researchers to believe that SM was immune to the effects of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) (Feinstein et al.

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