The Amygdala And Social Cognition

The amygdalae (Latin, also corpus amygdaloideum, singular amygdala, from Greek αμυγδαλή, amygdalē, 'almond', 'tonsil', listed in the Gray's Anatomy as the nucleus amygdalæ)[1] are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans.[2] Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.[3].

The research argues that PS affects the amygdala, a socioemotional control center in the brain that plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders. The claim is backed by several studies. PS plays a major role in abnormal psychological, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes in both human and animals. Charil

From the study conducted by Ferri et al., there was a slight statistical significance between amygdala activation to neutral and fearful faces in regards to anxiety levels. On the contrary, they did not find a significant difference. This could be due to the girls being unable to predict the

The amygdala of psychopaths have has been found to be hypoactive during fear conditioning (Birbaumer et al., 2005), moral decision-making (Glenn, Raine, & Schug, 2009), and social cooperation (Rilling et al., 2007). As expected, studies have also found the amygdala to be hypoactive in response to fearful faces or other affect-related activity (e.g. Carré et al., 2013; Kiehl et al., 2001). Nevertheless, Müller et al. (2003) found that psychopaths had increased activation in the amygdala (in addition to increased prefrontal activation) when viewing negative content (e.g. pictures of threatening animals, wounded people) which they interpreted as reflecting abnormal prefrontal – amygdala communication.” (Umbach et al., 2015,

Studying parts of the brain that are involved in dealing with fear and stress also helps researchers understand possible causes of PTSD to begin formulating a plan to treat PTSD. The amygdala is known for its role in emotion, learning, and memory. The amygdala appears active in learning to fear an event as well as in the early stages of fear extinction. In storing extinction memories and dampening an existing fear the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in problem solving, decision making, and judgement, is seemingly

Throughout the course of history, the phenomenon of psychology has drawn countless psychologists and scientists to further comprehend the depths and fascinations of the human mind and body. Using experimentation as a source of obtaining and recording desired information regarding the new realizations of the mind, cognitive scientists continue to fathom at the intricate revelations the mind has to offer. Although the complexities of the mind have brought scientists to puzzling conclusions, scientists have used a series of experimental steps to conclude how and why the processes of the brain can change the actions and personalities of an individual.

In Chapter 8 “Where the Wild Things Are,” the author Le Doux looked at the how our brain regions and systems functioned during the development of anxiety disorders. He introduced many researchers’ ideas and theories such as Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental conditioning; then, he listed the brain regions that were associated with anxiety and fear conditioning such as hippocampus, amygdala, sympathetic nervous system, and various brain cortexes. He also explained how our brain became conditioned for different anxiety disorders.

Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, of information in the brain. It is a process that is generalized within a species, and relates to members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the methods of cognitive

Due to its primary role in processing memory and emotional reactions, over the last decade and a half psychologists have been linking the amygdala to psychopathy. It is involved in aversive conditioning and instrumental learning and is thus involved in all the processes that, when impaired, produce the same functional impairments displayed by psychopaths. Two famous studies conducted by Tiihonen and Kiehl respectively have confirmed this. Tiihonen used a volumetric MRI to test and confirm the positive correlation between low amygdaloid volume and a high degree of psychopathy in violent criminals (measured by the Hare checklist-revised) while Kiehl used a functional MRI to prove reduced amygdala response during an emotional memory task in individuals who scored high on the Hare checklist-revised. However, both these studies along with numerous others were conducted using violent offenders as subjects rather than individuals with psychopathy. Although many psychopaths do exhibit violent tendencies, not all violent offenders are necessarily psychopaths. A study conducted by Raine is one of the few that did focus only on individuals exhibiting psychopathy. In his study Raine was able to show reduced prefrontal grey matter in his test subjects. Unfortunately though, he was unable to differentiate between grey matter in different regions of the prefrontal cortex. It is however clear that there is one region of the frontal cortex that could be

The amygdala has been the subject of many researchers’ curiosity throughout the history of neurological science and neuropsychology. Multiple studies have been successful in identifying the role of the amygdala in the human brain and it’s primary

A psychopath is traditionally defined as someone with a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits. In society, psychopaths display specific characteristics such as lack of empathy, which may identify and explain how they respond in certain situations.

judgements, language and control our social behaviour is processed in the frontal lobe. Due to the

While Manesi and colleagues found that images of gazing human eyes elicited prosocial behavior, the researchers did not utilize an fMRI to see which brain areas were involved. This study aims to examine which brain areas are involved in prosocial behavior that is activated by seeing pictures of human eyes and faces. Given that empathy is a known predecessor for engagement in prosocial behavior, it is possible that viewing human faces and eyes will activate the same brain areas as

Chapter 2 is centered on the early attempts to identify the brain’s components of emotions. Key researchers that are discussed are a Cornell neuroanatomist, James Papez, and aforementioned physician and neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who worked at Yale and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Together, this pair of researchers conducted seminal medial temporal lobe lesion experiments. The resulting idea was that the emotional brain is composed of a set of interconnected structures in the core of the brain. MacLean dubbed these structures as the “limbic system”. The function of the limbic system and it relationship to emotion was widely debated by many researchers.

Symbolic interaction offers a dramaturgical perspective of how people identify and create their social self through social interaction. Many social theorist studies social interaction/ self as a function to our society. In addition, microsociology develop the idea of applying social interaction on a smaller sample size within the society. Therefore, there were an increase in the study of human interaction and the self. Mead develop his idea through symbolic interaction and social psychology of the human mind. Simmel develop his idea through the perspective of symbolic interaction of urban sociology. Both sociologist focus on the inter social aspect of the human life.