Understanding the Functions of the Amygdala

Literature review focuses on the activation pattern of the amygdala and their role in threat assessment of attention, and the effect of neuropeptide oxytocin on the amygdala. The amygdala body plays an important role in human threat assessment. In humans and primates, facial expression recognition and gaze direction are important aspects of social behavior, but the amygdala body plays an important role in this function (Boll, Gamer, Kalisch, & Buchel, 2011, p. ) From a medical point of view, amygdala research will help to understand the neurological basis of many behavioral disorders such as borderline personality disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.

The amygdala body plays an important role in face recognition. Functional image studies found that the activity of the amygdala is greatly increased when displaying facial images. The amygdala body receives visual information from the thalamus via a subcortical pathway. The amygdala also may play an important role in identifying fear and negative emotions. Emotional disgust is thought to be identified by activating islets and basal ganglia. Emotional recognition can also be used in occipital cerebral cortex, frontal cortex and right frontal cortex.

It has many biological functions, but the main role of amagdala is to deal with negative emotional stimuli. Significant changes in normal amygdala activation are associated with severe psychological disorders. For example, human schizophrenia patients have significantly less activation in the amygdala and memory system (hippocampus) due to the significant reduction in the size of these areas. On the other hand, people with depression, anxiety and attachment anxiety significantly increased blood flow in the amygdala and the memory system.

An important function of the amygdala in complex vertebrate animals, including humans, is to form and preserve memories of emotional events. Damage to the amygdala may impair the acquisition and expression of Pavlov's horror condition. During fear conditioning, sensory stimulation has been shown to reach the outer nucleus of the basolateral complex, especially the amygdala, which are interrelated. The association between stimuli and their predicted aversive events can be mediated by long-term potentiation, sustained synaptic plasticity. Memory of emotional experience memorized at the lateral nucleus synapse causes fear behavior through a connection to the central nucleus of the amygdala which is the center of the origin of many fear reactions including freezing (immobility), tachycardia (tachycardia) Increased respiration and stress - hormone release