Episode 29: Your brain’s alarm system: The Amygdala

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 29 - Your brain’s alarm system: The Amygdala Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/fXuZpMiSGHk 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. -- 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-Overcoming-Explosive/dp/1572244623 Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Principles-Psychitecture/dp/B08SGWNLV9 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" (https://youtu.be/GHnuyJFGVng) 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 -- Connect, Follow and Subscribe! Linktree: https://linktr.ee/senseofmind Sign up for the video version: https://mailchi.mp/d76edf98390b/sense-of-mind-newsletter-sign-up-page Link to all of our video newsletters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC92ipyM9i9L_9yna8Jn6eM5RSQmNbSJj Subscribe to the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC610T-s8gpOVDtAVXTZ35FQ Website: www.Senseofmindshow.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sense.ofmind/ By the way, the newsletter is 100% free, it has zero ads, and I will NEVER sell or give your information to third parties. Please follow, share and subscribe if you found this helpful, thanks for listening! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/senseofmind/support