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Amygdala Research Paper

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The amygdala, the seat of emotion and motivation, is a fascinating telencephalic component of our limbic system located in the anterior temporal lobe. Scientific advancements in the field of neuroscience have revealed that this almond shaped wonder is a versatile emotional genius contributing to various facets of cognition. The term amygdala, first mentioned by the German physician and anatomist Karl Friedrich Burdach (1819), is composed of lateral, basal and accessory basal nuclei, collectively termed as the basolateral amygdala. Though the surrounding central, medial and cortical nuclei, are often included in the 'amygdala complex', it is the basolateral amygdala that accepts the sensory input from thalamus (sensory relay station), hippocampus …show more content…

The components of the amygdala vital for fear conditioning are lateral nucleus, basal nucleus, intercalated cells and central nucleus. The amygdala is suggested to be essential in recognition of fear in facial expressions as well as multiple emotions in a single facial expression so that any lesion of the amygdala can result in selective deficits in the recognition of fearful facial expressions. The lateral and basal nuclei of the amygdala are believed to be the location of memory storage in fear learning. For fear related memories, new protein synthesis in the amygdala is required for reconsolidation after retrieval and disruption of reconsolidation erases a fear memory trace in human amygdala, thus supporting the fact that the amygdala plays an important role in an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism. The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway is thought to play a crucial role in fear conditioning and synaptic plasticity in the amygdala. The NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate)-dependent calcium influx in the lateral amygdala leads to the activation of protein kinases and associated transcription factors during memory formation. Neuroimaging studies suggest involvement of a subcortical pathway, via midbrain and thalamus, to the right amygdala in mediating “unseen” visual events of fear. Studies also have found that the amygdala responds not only to fearful facial manifestation, but also to fearful stimuli and events such as accidents, explosions, mutilations,

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