Word: amygdala
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Exactly how diabetes is associated with cognitive deficits isn't clear, but there is evidence suggesting that certain areas of the diabetic brain - such as the amygdala, which processes emotions, and the hippocampus, which is related to memory - are smaller than normal, a difference that may affect learning and recall of information. Early studies have even suggested that these physical differences may also predict Alzheimer's disease. While Dixon's study did not find a difference between the diabetes patients and controls on memory skills, Jacobson says the connection between the two diseases is an area of intense research...
...part of the brain that takes over when we are frightened is called the amygdala. It's an ancient, almond-shaped mass of nuclei located deep within the brain's temporal lobes. The amygdala is designed to be wildly sensitive to certain things - for instance, anything uncontrollable and unfair (like a terrorist attack involving an airplane) - and remarkably forgiving toward other, far deadlier menaces that seem to be small in scale (car crashes) or involve less suffering (heart attacks...
Most of all, the amygdala loathes unpredictability of the kind we are currently enduring. Lab experiments with rats and humans show that both species prefer predictable electric shocks over unpredictable shocks. That's because, on a normal day, the brain works by following shortcuts. We recognize patterns in order to make split-second judgments about what we are seeing. Shortcuts are ruthlessly efficient, which is important for an organ that only uses about 40 watts of power per operation. But the more uncertainty we face, the more shortcuts our brains use. And the shortcuts lead to a slew of predictable...
Happily, the brain's other defining characteristic is that it is flexible. Once we know our weaknesses, we can compensate for them. The part of your brain associated with conscious thought, called the prefrontal cortex, has a direct line into the amygdala and can quiet it down. This requires effort - and creativity. "The most productive thing is to recognize that it's natural to feel anxiety in the context of unpredictability. A rat would be going through the same stuff," says Forsyth, and he means that in a reassuring way. "And then sit with it. Do not let your feelings...
Phelps conducted other studies in which the images included such friendly faces as Will Smith's and Harrison Ford's and found that this helped control the amygdala too. "The more you think about people as individuals," she says, "the more the brain calms down...