Word: amygdala
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This section of the brain, the amygdala, is responsible for creating the feeling of craving, according to Breiter, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School...
More importantly, he said, the amygdala allows people to see potentially harmful outcomes of their actions, thus serving as a deterrent for most people from abusing drugs...
Scientists have also learned that the old notion that 90% of sex is in the mind is literally true: the parts of the brain involved in sexual response include, at the very least, the sensory vagus nerves, the midbrain reticular formation, the basal ganglia, the anterior insula cortex, the amygdala, the cerebellum and the hypothalamus...
...full 3-D because MRI machines can slice along three or more planes, not just one. A computer can then compile the information to generate a sort of relief map of the brain, left, depicting even the smallest brain structures (for example, the brain's center for emotion, the amygdala, in yellow, is deeply buried but visible). Using MRIs, scientists have learned that the brains of schizophrenics, above right, are smaller than those of people without the disease, above left, and that they have smaller frontal lobes, the part of the brain responsible for planning, decision making, higher learning...
When the brain detects a threat, a number of structures, including the hypothalamus, amygdala and pituitary gland, go on alert: they exchange information with each other and then send signaling hormones and nerve impulses to the rest of the body to prepare for fight or flight...