The Amygdala

​Fear, or emotions, or attention?

The Amygdala is one of those brain areas that gets a lot of attention. A lot. In fact, it may be one of the most famous areas of the brain – in no short part due to its role in fear and what Daniel Goleman called the “Amygdala Hijack” to describe situations in which emotionality takes over your brain – or supposedly at least. But the amygdala is a little misrepresented – let’s clear up its reputation.

SM are the initials of a patient, who according to the case in a well-cited paper by Feinstein et al. in 2010, exhibits little to no fear. What is special about SM is that she has severe damage to both her Amygdalae. And though at the time there was known to be a strong relationship between fear and Amygdala function, SM’s rare condition enables the study of this in real world scenarios.