[HN Gopher] The Roots of Fear: Understanding the Amygdala
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The Roots of Fear: Understanding the Amygdala
Author : birriel
Score : 41 points
Date : 2024-11-04 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ucdavis.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ucdavis.edu)
| amelius wrote:
| > The researchers took samples from brains of humans and rhesus
| macaque monkeys, separated individual cells and sequenced their
| RNA. This shows which genes are active (being expressed) in a
| particular cell and allows researchers to sort them into groups
| based on gene expression.
|
| How do you extract RNA from monkeys without activating the RNA
| that expresses fear?
| verisimi wrote:
| > How do you extract RNA from monkeys without activating the
| RNA that expresses fear?
|
| You stroke the back of the monkey's hand and give it banana
| treats.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| RNA is the messenger from the nucleus that tells the ribosome
| what to make.
|
| The DNA sequences that create the RNA are called genes. It was
| only learned the last few decades that genes can be turned
| off/on. This is how a single embryo cell can produce all the
| different cells in our body. Unfortunately they chose the word
| expressed for this concept.
|
| What they are saying is they want to study the amygdala aka the
| primitive pre-evolutionary part of our brain we share with
| other creatures. It is said the primitive brain controls
| breathing, heart rate,fear and anger. It is also said emotions
| like fear or anger is our brain's faulty perception of our
| body's response to all the adrenaline the amygdala is
| initiates.
|
| They know the amygdala has different types of cells. To learn
| why certain cells malfunction, and cause depression and other
| disorders, they are studying DNA sequences.
| wayoverthecloud wrote:
| I think there are two types of fear mostly, the innate survival
| animalistic fear and the self-perpetuating fear caused due to
| misunderstanding. The animalistic fear is present in all and it's
| not possible to get rid of. When you see a snake or a tiger in
| front of you, that fear is natural. The response is to jump or
| run and is so spontaneous, you can't really control it. It's
| necessary for survival. But I think we are interested in the
| other fear, the one that is bound to attachment. You see a tiger,
| you panic, turns out to be a cat, you laugh it off, go away, that
| fear is not an issue. But if you go about your day thinking, what
| if that was a tiger? What if I get jumped by tiger this time?
| Then, you are creating the fear. The fear has no basis, except
| for it was implanted to you awhile ago. And now you are attaching
| yourself to it. You are extending it which is the actual problem.
| Most of us have fears that go back to childhood. If you think
| back far enough(like the tiger example), question yourself why
| you are afraid, you know the answers.
|
| One more example, I used to be afraid of getting heart-attacks in
| the past. Even gas passing would make me panic. Have I ever had a
| heart-attack before? No. How am I so damn sure that I have a
| heart-attack if I don't even know what it's supposed to feel
| like? Heart-attack is a bad thing and it shouldn't be happening
| to me. How is every acid reflux a heart-attack to me now. I have
| created my own bubble of fear. When though? I sure as hell didn't
| know what heartattack is when I was born. So it happened when I
| was able to comprehend what a heart-attack is right? For me, it's
| due to people around me passing, it's due to reading on Internet
| about young celebrities dying to strokes, watching movies, etc.
| It got implanted in me. I don't know a heartattack I just have an
| idea of it which is not the same thing. Not even remotely
| related.
|
| Fear arises due to misunderstanding. If you trace it far back
| enough, fear was implanted mostly in the childhood.
| Vecr wrote:
| https://gwern.net/backstop#hui-nengs-flag -- Evolution as
| Backstop for Reinforcement Learning -- Hui Neng's Flag -- the
| mathematics of positive and negative reinforcement
|
| https://gwern.net/fiction/batman -- The Gift of the Amygdali --
| Sci-Fi, anxiety, pain
| anodyne33 wrote:
| tl:dr - brains are weird man
|
| There's a tremendous episode of Radiolab called Fault Line that
| talks about the effect of a total resection of the Amygdala. It
| worked out very poorly. I heard it weeks before I was scheduled
| for a right temporal lobe resection, including Amygdala and it
| scared the bejeesus out of me. A quick call to my neurosurgeon's
| coordinator assuaged my fears.
|
| The bilateral resection caused Kluver-Busey syndrome in the
| patient that Fault Line discusses.
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