The Amygdala Case Study

In every business place there is a room filled with important documents – documents that contain every single piece of information required for the business to grow: every tax receipt, history and any other useful information. These pieces of information dictate how the business should be managed in different situations, how the employees should react in the event of a positive or negative situation and what decisions are essential for the business to thrive. Human beings have their own room filled with this much information – in the brain. This particular section of the brain is called the amygdala. The name amygdala originates from the Greek word ‘amygdalē' meaning almond, which is suiting because according to the University of Idaho College

If one is going to look at both amygdalae, it would be clear that they only differ in function and mirror each others' location. They are identical in structure and appearance and are considered to be part of the limbic system – a system responsible for a person's mood, arousal and emotions as well as intuition related particularly to ensure one's survival. One of t prominent emotions in a human being wanting to survive is fear. The amygdalae both have their own distinct functions. However, they also function separately to induce a common emotion: fear. Both the left and right amygdalae are able to process fear due to the presence of central nuclei in neurons that are responsible for conditioning fear in a person. Ressler and Davis (2003) state that: “the central nuclei are involved in the genesis of many fear responses such as defensive behaviour, autonomic nervous system responses, neuroendocrine responses and

This means that the left amygdala is more or less the active one out of the two whenever a person reacts in a way that he or she can control – for example, spontaneous crying or laughing is often used in a play or an imitation. The right amygdala however, being responsible for the unconscious process of emotion, is active whenever a person cannot control his or her reaction to a particular stimuli. For example, no matter how strong a person is, if he or she gets hurt too much, he or she will start to tear up or shout or react in a way that is almost involuntary. This is also because the right amygdala is responsible for episodic memory. Episodic memory refers to the association of a time, place or object to a particular memory. An example would be: a woman feeling emotional after walking past her and her deceased husband's favourite restaurant – this place could have been the place where many memorable events took place, could be associated with so many memories, and therefore make her feel