The Role of the Amygdala in Human Functioning

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History

The term ‘amygdala’ was first used by Burdach (1819) and referred to a set of nuclei in the brain (Aggleton & Saunders, 2000). In 1939, researchers Klüver & Bucy inflicted bilateral lesions of the inferior temporal lobe of monkeys in a laboratory in an attempt to reduce aggression. These lesions affected the cortical areas, amygdala, and the hippocampus. Later this became known as Klüver-Bucy syndrome, and consisted of symptoms such as psychic blindness, hypermetamorphsis, oral tendencies, and changes in emotional and sexual behaviors. Lesions of the amygdala made monkeys fearless of e.g. humans or snakes, and affectively flat, tame. This research brought recognition to the notion that the amygdala plays a significant role in the recognition of emotional and social relevance of sensory stimuli. In 1995, Bechara conducted a dissociation study that concluded that amygdala function is dissociated from hippocampus functioning. In other words, Bechara clarified that the amygdala is responsible for the acquisitioning of fear conditioning whereas the hippocampus is responsible for memory of conditioning procedures.

In the year 1990 up until the year 1996, LeDoux studied the role of different brain structures in rats in reference to fear conditioning. He found that after creating lesions in the amygdala fear conditioning did not take place. Furthermore, his research concluded that the amygdala is an important structure for fear learning and the expression of emotion. In addition, LeDoux’s research also demonstrated that the hippocampus provides contextual information and interacts with the amygdala in fear learning as well as emotional memory. Overall all of the past research conducted demonstrates how the amygdala plays a cle...

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...tions for mental health. New York, NY:

Worth Publishers.

Lamprecht, R. & Dudai, Y. (2000). The amygdala in conditioned taste aversion: it’s

there, but where. In J. P. Aggleton (Ed.), The Amygdala. (331-351). New York: Oxford University Press Inc.

LeDoux, J. E., Cicchetti, P., Xangoraris, A., and Romanski, L.M. (1990) The

lateral amygdaloid nucleus: sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning. Journal of Neuroscience, 10, 1062-1069.

Le Doux, J. (1996) The Emotional Brain. Simon and Schuster, New York.

Norgren, R., Nishijo, H., and Travers, S. P. (1989) Taste responses from the entire

gustatory apparatus. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 575, 246-263.

Yamamoto, T., Shimura, T., Sako, N., Yasoshima, Y., and Sakai, N. (1994) Neural

substrates for conditioned taste aversion in the rat. Behavioral Brain Research, 65,

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