Have you ever wondered why you jump when you’re startled? Maybe you wonder why you have a harder time handling stress and anxiety than your friends and family do. Part of the reason might lie in your ...

The amygdala is often referred to as the fear center of the brain, but this description hardly does justice to the amygdala's complexity. Located deep in the brain's left and right temporal lobes, our ...

The amygdala is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotional and behavioral responses. An amygdala hijack is a fight-or-flight response to stress. To better understand what an amygdala hijack ...

In 1995, author Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack”–an idea that has subsequently appeared in countless blogs, self-help books, and videos. According to this idea, a part of the brain ...

You drop a glass while making breakfast. You get stuck in traffic on your way to work. Your boss yells at you for being late. Congratulations! You’re having a bad morning. It happens to everyone, at ...

Major depressive disorder has been associated with volumetric abnormality in the amygdala. In this meta-analysis we examine results from magnetic resonance imaging volumetry studies of the amygdala in ...

A new study on mice from the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics has pinpointed 'positive' neurons housed in the back of the amygdala and 'negative' neurons located in the front of the ...

The amygdala can activate a person’s fight-or-flight response as a reaction to a real or perceived threat of danger. Amygdala hijack describes the perhaps unnecessary triggering of this response and ...