Researchers find that the amygdala is a sophisticated mediator that chooses between action-based and stimulus-based learning ...

Have you ever wondered why you jump when you’re startled? Maybe you wonder why you have a harder time handling stress and anxiety than your friends and family do. Part of the reason might lie in your ...

As we work on overcoming what scares us, a new plasticity becomes available in our brain, and fear strikes out.

A Dartmouth study challenges the conventional view that the amygdala—the two-sided structure deep in the brain involved in ...

What Is the Limbic System? The limbic system is a part of the brain consisting of several components such as the hippocampus and amygdala and serving many functions within the body. While we have a ...

The brain mechanisms underlying the suppression of fear responses have attracted a lot of attention as they are relevant for therapy of human anxiety disorders. Despite our broad understanding of the ...

In 1995, author Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack”–an idea that has subsequently appeared in countless blogs, self-help books, and videos. According to this idea, a part of the brain ...

Picture a star-shaped cell in the brain, stretching its spindly arms out to cradle the neurons around it. That's an astrocyte, and for a long time, scientists thought its job was caretaking the brain, ...

Our brain makes decisions based on direct associations between stimuli in our environment, but it often also does so based on events that initially appear unrelated. How does it achieve this? A recent ...

A study published in Nature Neuroscience examined the role the amygdala plays in diet regulation. Researchers at Cold Spring Research Laboratory found a group of neurons in the amygdala prompt mice to ...