The Role of the Amygdala in Fear and Panic
The definition of fear has proved to be an elusive mystery plaguing scientists. While there is much agreement as to the physiological effects of fear, the neural pathways and connections that bring upon these effects are not well understood. From the evolutionary standpoint, the theory is that fear is a neural circuit that has been designed to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations (1). How does it all work? Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which in turn, determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses like freezing or fleeing as well as changes in the inner workings of the body's organs and glands (1). There are important distinctions to make between emotions and feelings. Feelings are "red herrings", products of the conscious mind, labels given to unconscious emotions (2) whereas emotions are distinct patterns of behaviors of neurons. Emotions can exist of conscious experiencesas well as physiological and neurological reactions and voluntary and involuntary behaviors (3). But the components of fear goes beyond feelings and emotions. It is also the specific memory of the emotion. After a frightful experience, one can remember the logical reasons for the experience (e.g. the time and place) but one will also "feel" the memory, and his body will react as such (i.e. increased heart and respiration rate, sweating). In one recent case, after a near drowining incident, the victim could not only vividly remember each detail, but when doing so, his body reacted as though he were reliving the experience. These feelings of memory are stored in an ...
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... of being harmed at this particular moment. The three emotions can diffuse into one single diffuse state (5).
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http://academic.uofs.edu/department/neuro/fear.html
Van Goozen, Stephanie H. M. (ed.). Emotions: Essays on Emotion Theory. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Hillsdale, N.J., 1994
Kavanaugh, Robert. Emotion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Hillsdale, N.J., 1996
Muller, Jeff, "Functional Inactivation of the Lateral and Basal Nuclei of the Amygdala by Muscimol Infusion Prevents Fear Conditioning to an Explicit Conditioned Stimulus and to Contextual Stimuli". Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 111, No. 4, pp. 683-691, 1997
Stories were being told, except we weren’t sure if they were true. Rumours were spreading about how the Taliban treated people, but time went by and nothing changed. When the world started to fall silent, Malala Yousafzai, with all her courage and strength, spoke up. She has suffered for doing that, but she doesn’t regret it. Every word she says is expressed with concern. She knows that even her small voice, can and has, changed the world. Malala Yousafzai is a young activist from Swat Valley, Pakistan. In my opinion she is one of the most influential people living and that’s why I’m going to talk about her struggle, her accomplishments and what she wants and will try to change until the day she dies.
amygdala and the hippocampus. Those parts of the brain link fear and memory together. With
...as long term potentiation have different roles in fear conditioning. Hippocampal LTP is responsible for assembling and consolidating context into the hippocampus. The context then becomes associated with the US in the amygdala. Finally, the amygdala plays an important role in constructing and storing CS-US association during fear conditioning (Maren, 2001). Studying these mechanism will prove to be valuable in understanding the synaptic plasticity in other learning and memory systems. It is also possible to use fear conditioning as a model for fear disturbances disorders. Researching fear conditioning at the intracellular level, such as the role of glutamate receptors, provides a foundation in understanding memory formation, as well as begin unraveling disorders that have fear as a component: anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Kim & Jung, 2006).
There are many studies pertaining to generalized anxiety disorder. The studies examine the genetic and environmental risks for major anxiety disorders, their course-both alone and when they occur along with other diseases such as depression-and their treatment. Like heart disease and diabetes, these brain disorders are complex and probably result from a combination of genetic, behavioral, developmental, and other factors. Much of the research of anxiety centers on the amygdale, an almond-shaped structure deep within the brain. The amygdale is believed to serve as a communications hub between the parts of the brain that process incoming sensory signals and the parts that interpret them. Other research focuses on the hippocampus, another brain structure that is responsible for processing threatening or traumatic stimuli. By learning more about brain circuitry involved in fear and anxiety, scientists may be able to devise new and more specific treatments for anxiety disorders. Researchers are attempting to learn how genetics and experience interact in each of the anxiety disorders-information they hope will yield clues to prevention and treatment.
Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography, I Am Malala, (2015), portrays that youth is defined by the experiences and growth one goes through their life. Yousafzai elucidates this by employing emotional appeals, presenting ethical explanations, and providing logic to justify her fight for everyone’s rights for education. In the beginning she was just another girl born “hidden away behind a curtain,” and was living “simply to prepare food and give birth to children.” As she continues on with her story, Yousafzai matures even at fifteen years old through her experiences and apprises the intended younger audience about how education is a definitive role during one’s youth.
The book, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, is written by Malala Yousafzai and co-written by Christina Lamb. This moving memoir was originally published by Little, Brown and Company in New York on October 8th, 2013. This memoir showcases different parts of the world that refuse for females to gain an education. Malala mainly draws attention towards the educational issue in her own country of Pakistan and the valley of Swat during modern day, but occasionally refers to its history. The geographical issue of countries denying girls of an education is derived from the country’s cultural, social, and religious beliefs; these beliefs will dictate if they allow girls to go to school. This memoir argues
These differences turned out to be due to the details of the procedure, they performed separate scans for the actual presented words, and the not presented but related words, and for unrelated new words (Schacter, 2001). Epinephrine and norepinephrine also have shown to improve memory because increase glucose levels in the blood, and they affect the amygdala, which plays a part in emotional memory (Durand, 2005). Neurons in the basolateral amygdala that were activated during a fear conditioning were activated again during memory retrieval of the feared object. The amount of reactivated neurons showed a correlation with the behavior associated of that fear memory; this indicates a correlation between neurons of the amygdala and memory (Scripps, 2007).
Malala Yousafzai, was once another ordinary girl struggling in her hometown Swat in Pakistan. Now she is a renowned author for her book I Am Malala, where she speaks about all the imbalances and injustices that occur in Pakistan. Her life was threatened by the Taliban when she fought for her cause: gaining the right for women's education in her country. The Taliban had banned education for women, yet Malala risked her life to accomplish her goal. Throughout her book she uses an inspirational tone, empowering diction, and vivid imagery to truly expose the Taliban for the corrupt educational system they have set for women in Pakistan.
Malala has made an impact in many people's lives by sharing her thoughts on the importance of education internationally. There are many daily struggles in the Taliban, they have banned girls’ education which is something Malala believes it is indispensable. Not only does Malala want to continue going to school, she wants all the other girls to acquire the same education and throughout history, she stood up in opposition to the Taliban’s to develop what she was speaking up for. As Malala’s voice was heard through books and interviews, many perspectives changed about the definition of education and the profit a person can get out of it. Education can only get a person so far, it is they key to success due to the opportunities it brings to an individual, Yousafzai represents the importance of having an education for the better in someone’s future. All of those “fights” have put a target on her head, her one and only dream was to go to school and she obtained that.
Malala Yousafzai is a teenager who stood up for girls’ education. Her country, Pakistan, was taken over by a group of terrorists called the Taliban. The Taliban had bombed over 100 schools, and closed down even more. The government didn’t do anything, but Malala started to stand up to the Taliban at a young age. I chose Malala as my topic because she spoke out for what she thought was right, even though she suffered for it.
John Lennon had reached remarkable success and fame as a member of The Beatles. He, along with McCartney had written some of the most popular songs of their generation; “All My Loving”, I Want to Hold Your Hand” “We Can Work it Out” and “Come Together” are just a small...
Watson, J. B. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. The American Psychologist, 55(3), 313-317. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.southuniversity.libproxy.edmc.edu/
The life is full of stressful situations. The human being may found himself in dangerous, awkward, and weary position that will make him stressed and this is how the body responds. Anxiety is the body 's response to any change that requires a conformity or reaction. (Goldberg, 2014). The stress is a coin with two faces, positive face and negative face. So, the stress is not always bad, actually it is your body 's method for securing you. It helps the person to stand on his feet, face the emergency and dangerous situation and make the person do his works rather than play and stay in front of the television. Therefore, when the person threatened his sensory system reacts by discharging a surge of anxiety hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol,
A number of different theories have been proposed to explain how these factors contribute to the development of this disorder. The first theory is experiential: people can learn their fear after an initial unpleasant experience such as a humiliating situation, physical or sexual abuse, or just attending a violent act. Similar experiences that follow add to the anxiety. According to another theory, which refers to cognition or thinking, people believe or predict that the outcome of a particular situation will be degrading or harmful to them. This can happen, for example, if parents are overly protective and constantly alert to potential problems. The third theory focuses on biological basics. Research suggests that the amygdala, a structure deep inside the brain, serves as a communication center that signals the presence of threats, and triggers a response in the form of fear or
R. J. Dolan, Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior, Science 8 November 2002: 298 (5596), 1191-1194. [DOI:10.1126/science.1076358]