The amygdala is a region in the brain that's associated with fear conditioning and emotions. It is activated when people look at frightening photos or any frightening stimuli. The amygdala is also activated when you look at photos of widely disliked people and widely admired people for example watching pictures of Hitler or Martin Luther king. But what happens if you damage your amygdala? image source: Wonderopolis People with damage to the amygdala do not lose their emotions, that is they can continue to feel fear, anger, happiness and other emotions just like normal people. However, damage to the amygdala interferes with social judgments that we make in our day-to-day life. for example, when we look at someones face, some faces strike us 'untrustworthy' or 'trustworthy' but people who have a damaged amygdala see all people as 'trustworthy'. …show more content…
For example when they hear a story about an accident where many people were killed, normal people remember the emotional part and forget the background. On the contrary, people with amygdala damage focus on the irrelevant part as much as the emotional part. for example they would remember the colour of a sofa as much as the dead body on the sofa in a crime story. People with amygdala damage also fail to recognize the expressions of fear and that's because people with amygdala damage rely on the mouth and nose to recognize emotions but fear is an emotion that in general is associated with the eyes. People with amygdala damage also cannot experience fear. A case study where a lady was born with an impaired amygdala reported that she had never experienced fear in her life. Researchers took this as a challenge and decided to give her a