Could Amygdala Be The Center For Emotional Feelings?

✒️ - By Aan Gray

The amygdala, one of the most important centers of human emotion, is a major component of the limbic system described earlier. It receives processed information from the senses of vision, hearing, taste, smell, and general somesthetic and visceral senses. Thus, it is able to mediate emotional responses to such stimuli as a disgusting odor, a foul taste, a beautiful image, pleas ant music, or a stomachache. It is especially important in the sense of fear. Output from the amygdala goes in two directions of special interest:

1. Some output projects to the hypothalamus and lower brainstem and thus influences the somatic and visceral motor systems. An emotional response to a sight or sound may, through these connections, make one's heart race, make the hair stand on end (pilocrection), or induce vomiting.
2. Other output projects to areas of the prefrontal cortex that mediate conscious control and expression of the emotions, such as our ability to express love or control anger.

Many important aspects of personality depend on an intact, functional amygdala and hypothalamus. When specific regions of the amygdala or hypothalamus are destroyed or artificially stimu lated, humans and other animals exhibit blunted or exaggerated expressions of anger, fear, aggression, self-defense, pleasure, pain, love, sexuality, and parental affection, as well as abnormalities in learning, memory, and motivation.

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