How the Amygdala Works

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.

Chapters
00:00 The amygdala detects important features of the environment
00:26 Is the amygdala the fear center?
01:15 Anatomy of the Amygdala
02:31 Information flow through the amygdala
04:04 Fight or flight response and the amygdala
06:54 Amygdala hijack
08:43 The amygdala's function is about more than stress and fear
09:49 The amygdala and biological relevance prediction error signal
14:20 Calm your amygdala

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Book recommendations (for calming the ‘amygdala hijack’ response):

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.
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

3D Brain images: Copyright © Society for Neuroscience (2017). Users may copy images and text, but must provide attribution to the Society for Neuroscience if an image and/or text is transmitted to another party, or if an image and/or text is used or cited in User’s work.

Music:
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0)

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks for your time and I hope you have a great day.
Andrew

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#neuroscience #amygdala #calmyourmind

[senseofmindshow]

⚠ CORRECTION!!! In this video, I said "this video is brought to you by the Diamond Mind Foundation." Well, as of December 2022, that is no longer the case.
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[Slugger]

Before realizing the amygdala’s role I would always put myself in fight or flight all the time great video

[vvann]

you're great, your music is great too
Difficult people should be grateful for his effort instead of being upset with the music

[brianpaul]

The whole first 39 seconds before I turned it off would have been a whole lot better without the blaring music. Do you usually sit in educational lectures with music blaring in the background?

[alexfloridarican]

Explains so much of why I get certain sensations when I get panicky. Ty for this explanation...it helped

[josephricciardi]

Enjoyed this very much! I’m a psychologist working with neurologically impaired individuals and see the impact of the unmodulated amygdala all the time in individuals with frontal lobe injuries. This makes a lot of sense

Keep up the good work!

[CarolRobertsonPsychosensory]

Love it, but would prefer without the music

[taylorguthrie]

So well done! This was so in depth and fantastic. I've been doing a lot of reading of Joseph Ledoux and his work on fear processing lately and I really like how you steered clear of claiming it was a "fear" circuit. Evolutionarily it looks like it's a salience and survival circuit and that our perception of fear is something we cognitively tack on after the fact. Loved the part about Amygdala hijack and the b-roll is 🔥

[zendrox.von-laixer]

This is such a good lesson. Thank you so much for uploading this since I got to control my behaviour better after recognizing when my amygdala is taking action

[geekymonkey]

I really enjoy watching your videos, and learn so much! Thank you for your work! Would you be willing to make a video about the (triune) lizard brain and why is wrong, and what model we should study instead? I've read the lizard brain is a myth but then what model should we use?

[nalou]

I won’t finish this video bc of the background music… hmmm

[halffullalpaca]

I love your video but have a request. Would you consider deleting the background music? It makes your voice hard to listen to. Thank you

[susantompkins]

Thank you for this very interesting also I enjoyed the background music 🎶 I can't understand why others are complaining about it

[patrickryan]

You have a very pleasant personality and therein much beauty as expressed through your intelligence. Your the type of instructor who can do the most good. Thanks for sharing and thus enhancing my understanding of the subject matter.

[oscardeltoro]

Exelente, video muchas gracias por compartir.

[janm]

Andrew, this was excellent... I had a stroke (tia), just after the world closed down for covid, March, 2020. The doctor at the hospital did an mri
of my brain ( my whole head, down to my neck).. Would the results possibly have shown any amygdala function, either good or bad results? It's sort of an awkward question, but I'm curious if the amygdala would have shown up. Does this make sense? My thanks, jan

[PauloRLustosa]

Muito obrigado. Eu achei sua explicação excelente.

[Psychiatry.]

Often Amygdala damage (not over active) cause *No Fear*, but the inverse is possible. Also Visual Snow Syndrome and Hyperacusis (Sound Sensitivity) are strongly related to the Amygdala Functions, since any issue with it could trigger these conditions.

[TashRapoportYoga]

Thank you for a great review of the Amigdala!

[EldhoseJoseph]

Brilliant one. Can you make one on judgment and decision making? . I have watched pfc video.