Essay on The Role of the Amygdala in Fear and Panic

To coordinate with our current chapter on emotions, our class watched the film Inside Out. The story was about the emotions, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, controlling a goofy, honest, and caring 11 year old named Riley. Inside her brain, the emotions used controls to decide the way Riley feels. The part of the brain the “control center” in Inside Out represented was the Limbic System. I know this because during in our Body and Mind unit, the part of the brain we most associated with mood and emotions was this system. It is best defined as a complex system of nerves and networks in the brain, including areas concerned with instinct and mood. The Limbic System’s main control is emotions and drives feelings, which was the main purpose of the emotions “control center.”

The amygdalae (Latin, also corpus amygdaloideum, singular amygdala, from Greek αμυγδαλή, amygdalē, 'almond', 'tonsil', listed in the Gray's Anatomy as the nucleus amygdalæ)[1] are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans.[2] Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.[3].

Do all living things fear something? Those with minds surely have many and various fears, but even the simplest organisms must have fear, for fear is such a powerful feeling. Fear is all around us and is felt in every corner of the earth. Fear is the emotion or feeling that a living creature gets when its physical or mental life is interrupted by a change that causes the creature concern.

Fear is a chemical chain reaction in the brain. It is in the part of the brain that allows us to communicate and to speak with other people ("Layton, Julia"). The idea is an autonomic response in the brain with many parts of the brain involved. Fear starts with a scary stimulus and ends with a fight or flight response telling the human to fight back or run away. It starts with two processes the quick and messy way, and the clear and slow way ("Layton, Julia"). The quick way is when you are panicking and out of breath and the clear way takes a while and is when you calm down and realize it was nothing. Both of the processes happen simultaneously ("Layton, Julia"). The brain uses your blood stream and nervous system to create fear. When your muscles tighten and your heart races, you are probably in a state of fear. Without fear you would walk into traffic or pick up poisonous snakes. Fear saves our lives ("Layton,

The amygdala specializes in threat detection, fear, excitement, and arousal, hippocampus helps format long-term declarative memories and spatial reasoning. The anterior cingulate cortex influences autonomic function, decision making, error detection and emotion while the posterior has a role in spatial annotations memory. The septal area produces pleasurable feeling,

Studying parts of the brain that are involved in dealing with fear and stress also helps researchers understand possible causes of PTSD to begin formulating a plan to treat PTSD. The amygdala is known for its role in emotion, learning, and memory. The amygdala appears active in learning to fear an event as well as in the early stages of fear extinction. In storing extinction memories and dampening an existing fear the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in problem solving, decision making, and judgement, is seemingly

In Chapter 8 “Where the Wild Things Are,” the author Le Doux looked at the how our brain regions and systems functioned during the development of anxiety disorders. He introduced many researchers’ ideas and theories such as Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental conditioning; then, he listed the brain regions that were associated with anxiety and fear conditioning such as hippocampus, amygdala, sympathetic nervous system, and various brain cortexes. He also explained how our brain became conditioned for different anxiety disorders.

Signal processing within the amygdala is further regulated by interactions with a network of external structures. In particular, the dMT and its projections to the CeL have been demonstrated to play a role in fear memory retrieval. Notably, the dMT is assumed to be extensively modulated by opioids considering its innervation with opioidergic fibers and the high expression levels of MORs. Previous studies have reported the MOR system in the PVT, as part of the dMT, to be involved in managing physical pain. Moreover, social pain, which describes social rejection, being excluded or not being liked by others and which is associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression, appears to involve the MOR system in the PVT (Hsu et al). However, so far a direct implication of

Many scientists have been turning to genes that may have a role in creating fearful memories for an explanation as to what causes PTSD. They have also been studying different areas of the brain that control fear and stress such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. The amygdala has a role in the early stages of learning to fear and not to fear certain situations. The prefrontal cortex is said to help control the extinction of long term fearful memories. An individual genetics, brain area growth, and other environmental factors play a role in the risk of the individual developing PTSD after a traumatic

The parabrachial nucleus is a center for regulation of physiologic manifestations of fear avoidance and anxiety 83. These connections develop information about whole body rotation and position with respect to gravity. This information is linked to threat assessment pathways via connections between parabrachial nucleus and the central nucleus of the amygdala 85. Connections between amygdala and superior colliculi and between amygdala and thalamus link visual and somatosensory inputs to threat assessment pathways 86. Sensory inputs and assessment of threat converge in the hippocampus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the insula, and anterior cingulate. These four structures are components of both the limbic and the vestibular cortex 87. Vestibuloparabrachial network and amygdala-locus coeruleus outputs

The purpose of this experiment is to examine the functional role the dorsal periaqueductal gray (PAG) plays in initiating fear behavior by associative auditory and context fear conditioning. The dorsal PAG has been previously studied to coordinate defensive behavior via a freezing response. It has been noted that the dPAG relays unconditioned stimulus information to the basolateral amygdalar complex (BLA), which directs learned and innate responses to fear and that the neuronal activity spike rates evoked are modulated by context (Kim et al, 2013). After linking the dPAG’s relationship in fear conditioning, it is hypothesized that if the dPAG is necessary for associative fear conditioning, then after several paired unconditioned and conditioned stimuli trials, neuronal firing should augment in the dPAG. Moreover, in an additional experiment, after considering NMDA’s high associability with glutamate (excitatory neurotransmitter), it is predicted that the infusion of NMDA-R inhibitor within the dPAG will block excitation of the structure and function, which may lead to little to no freezing behavior when presented with the conditioned stimuli.

The limbic system was first recognized due to Franz Josef Gall (LeDoux, J., 1996). Franz Joseph Gall developed the idea of “phrenology” that focused on the study of the different variations of bumps on the human skull to be related to differences in behavioral and emotional functioning. The limbic system’s main function in the brain is to control emotional behaviors and certain forms of memories that are infused with emotion (amygdala). The amygdala is a part of the brain that forms the tail end of the basal ganglia within the rostral temporal lobe and is located near the hippocampus (Lambert, K.G. & Kinsley, C .H., 2005). The amygdala, as defined by the text, is an almond-shaped structure that functions as a part of the limbic system involved in regulation of emotion and sexual urges (Lambert, K.G. & Kinsley, C .H., 2005). In addition, the amygdala is comprised of a dozen or more sub regions that are not all involved in fear conditioning (LeDoux, J., 1996).

To continue the research, Jordan Smoller distinguishes this section of the genetics of anxiety, “…the majority of the genetic association studies of the anxiety disorders have been candidate gene studies based on a limited number of biological hypotheses. [These are] commonly focused on genes related to monoaminergic neurotransmitter systems [(refer to the particular neurotransmitters dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin)], neuropeptides, and HPA axis function [(hypothalaic-pituitary-adrenal axis)]” (Smoller, p. 308). Individually, settled test creature models catch critical parts of human nervousness and dread conduct, and neuroimaging considers have gained free ground in mapping the primary and practical segments of uneasiness/fear symptoms.

Fear is something every single human being has at some point in their life. When you are in dangerous, threatening, or scary situations, fear is what your body will feel. It is the ability to identify danger and make a choice to either confront that fear or flee from the situation like for example, if you were to break a vase, you would hide from your parents. That choice is completely up to the victim, and depends on the person. Although fear is handled differently by every person, it is a common emotion that everyone feels. Some seek out to overcome their fears, and seek the feeling of adrenaline they get from overcoming. Others flee the situation and don't think twice about trying to overcome their fear. In worst case scenarios people freeze

Chapter 2 is centered on the early attempts to identify the brain’s components of emotions. Key researchers that are discussed are a Cornell neuroanatomist, James Papez, and aforementioned physician and neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who worked at Yale and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Together, this pair of researchers conducted seminal medial temporal lobe lesion experiments. The resulting idea was that the emotional brain is composed of a set of interconnected structures in the core of the brain. MacLean dubbed these structures as the “limbic system”. The function of the limbic system and it relationship to emotion was widely debated by many researchers.