MO COSTANDI
A growing body of work shows that the brain has different systems and mechanisms to respond to certain kinds of threats and physiological changes in the body
People seem to have more than one way to work themselves into a panic. Contrary to a long-standing assumption of neuroscientists, humans can experience fear even when they lack the brain structure widely regarded as the brain’s ‘fear center’.
Many studies on animals over the years have shown that the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure located deep inside the brain, is crucial for the fear response. This finding has been confirmed in studies of humans.
Justin Feinstein at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and his colleagues have now found that in certain situations the fear response may occur even in people who do not have a working amygdala. Their work is published online today in Nature Neuroscience.
Scientific American for more