biological - role of amygdala
- Created by: Elyseee
- Created on: 22-02-21 18:07
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- amygdala
- Structure and function of amygdala
- Amygdala is structure in the brain made of ‘grey matter’ - collection of neuron cell bodies densely packed into cluster of 13 nuclei
- Located in medial temporal lobe, part of the limbic system, one amygdalae in each hemisphere
- First implicated in behaviour by Papez 1937, and later Maclean 1952
- Highly connected - linked to hypothalamus, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
- Has widespread influence of the brain function and therefore emotion, motivation and social interaction with humans and animals
- Plays major role in assessing and responding to environmental threats, hence importance in determining aggressive behaviour
- Amygdala and aggression
- Coccaro et al 2007 - investigated effects of amygdala in aggression, studies people with intermittent explosive disorder. Common symptom is outbursts of reactive aggression, participants viewed faces whilst undergoing fMRI scan
- Difference between IED participants and non-IED controls - IED participants showed high amygdala activity when viewing angry faces, demonstrates association between amygdala and processing aggressive emotions
- Study had high realism - angry facial expressions are an everyday signal of threat
- Amygdala and fear conditioning
- Mechanisms by which amygdala dysfunction affects aggression suggested by Gao et al 2010
- As children we learn to inhibit aggressive and anti-social behaviour through fear conditioning - it leads to punishments or negative outcomes
- Amygdala involved in processing fear information and fear conditioning
- Dysfunction in amygdala means child cannot identify social cues that indicate threat ie) angry faces, therefore does not link punishment to their aggressive behaviour - fear conditioning is disrupted, individual appears fearless, overly aggressive and antisocial
- Longitudinal study - 1795 participants tested for fear conditioning at 3 years old, measured physiological arousal in form of sweating in response to painful noise. 20 years later researchers found which participants had been involved in criminal behaviour, those who had committed crimes had shown no fear conditioning at 3 years old
- Suggests there may be causal relationship between amygdala and antisocial/criminal behaviour
- Structure and function of amygdala
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