The Role of the Amygdala in Fear and Panic Essay -- Biology Essays Res

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. E motions 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 ... ... of being harmed at this particular moment. The three emotions can diffuse into one single diffuse state (5). Internet Sources: Isaacson, Robert. The Limbic System. Plenum Press, New York, NY, 1982 Thompson, Jack George. The Psychobiology of Emotions. Plenum Press, New York, NY, 1988 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