Sublime

The central function of the amygdala, which I call the brain’s smoke detector, is to identify whether incoming input is relevant for our survival.11 It does so quickly and automatically, with the help of feedback from the hippocampus, a nearby structure that relates the new input to past experiences.

It is also stimulated by situations of danger and fear. In super-short version, the amygdala is the place in your brain where your emotional responses to various situations are generated – and it retains your responses – seemingly forever.

Gray’s data showed that the sensitivity of the amygdala depended, at least in part, on the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin in that part of the brain. Animals with low serotonin levels were hyperreactive to stressful stimuli (like loud sounds), while higher levels of serotonin dampened their fear system, making them less likely to become ag

If the amygdala is the smoke detector in the brain, think of the frontal lobes—and specifically the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC),12 located directly above our eyes—as the watchtower, offering a view of the scene from on high.

The amygdala is considered the emotional centre of the brain. It never forgets good experiences. Unfortunately, it never forgets bad experiences either.

Anxiety is the enemy of empathy. Fear makes us egocentric; egocentric makes us blind. An amygdala/prefrontal-cortex two-step that narrows the search parameters of the pattern recognition system. Pretty soon, as anxiety climbs too high, we lose our ability to find one another.

The amygdala has many functions;