Word: limbic
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...course, when sex is a possibility. Which explains why so many introductions in bars go wrong. One party's amygdalae gets primed by proximity even as the other party's amygdalae submit to a more primal force: the need to procreate. (Past research has shown that the brain's limbic system, which includes the amygdalae, lights up in response to sexually arousing stimuli - not surprisingly, more vigorously in men than in women...
...hormones are especially active in the brain's emotional center - the limbic system. This creates a "tinderbox of emotions," says Dr. Ronald Dahl, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh. Not only do feelings reach a flash point more easily, but adolescents tend to seek out situations where they can allow their emotions and passions to run wild. "Adolescents are actively looking for experiences to create intense feelings," says Dahl. "It's a very important hint that there is some particular hormone-brain relationship contributing to the appetite for thrills, strong sensations and excitement." This thrill seeking may have evolved...
...killer who went on a shooting spree in the Capitol Building in Washington in 1998, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Brain injury in an otherwise healthy person can lead to similar violence. Damage to the frontal region of the brain, which regulates what psychologists call the observing ego, or the limbic region, which controls violence, reflection and defensive behavior, can shut down internal governors and trigger all manner of unregulated behavior. "Somebody who had damage to both regions would be a bad player for sure," says forensic psychiatrist Neil Kaye, a faculty member at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia...
...body craves it: when cut short in experiments REM returns more insistently in subsequent periods of sleep. Neuroimaging has told us a lot about the dreaming-or at least the REM-brain. Those areas that are active include the brain stem (responsible for basic functions like heartbeat regulation), the limbic system (which mediates emotions, learning and memory) and parts of the forebrain involved in processing sensory information. Shut down, meanwhile, are the bits responsible for the most sophisticated mental processes, such as logical and ordered thought. It's a profile that fits neatly with the subjective experience of dreaming: vivid...
...very interesting way. CBT muted overactivity in the frontal cortex, the seat of reasoning, logic and higher thought as well as of endless rumination about that disastrous date. Paroxetine, by contrast, raised activity there. On the other hand, CBT raised activity in the hippocampus of the limbic system, the brain's emotion center. Paroxetine lowered activity there. As Toronto's Helen Mayberg explains, "Cognitive therapy targets the cortex, the thinking brain, reshaping how you process information and changing your thinking pattern. It decreases rumination, and trains the brain to adopt different thinking circuits." As with Schwartz's OCD patients, thinking...