Neuroscience News: Why the Memory of Fear Is Seared Into Our Brains

“A team of neuroscientists from the Tulane University School of Science and Engineering and Tufts University School of Medicine have been studying the formation of fear memories in the emotional hub of the brain—the amygdala—and think they have a mechanism.”

“In a nutshell, the researchers found that the stress neurotransmitter norepinephrine, also known as noradrenaline, facilitates fear processing in the brain by stimulating a certain population of inhibitory neurons in the amygdala to generate a repetitive bursting pattern of electrical discharges.”

“This bursting pattern of electrical activity changes the frequency of brain wave oscillation in the amygdala from a resting state to an aroused state that promotes the formation of fear memories.”

Read the full article here.

#Brains #Fear #Amygdala

My take: I certainly was not surprised by this article’s content and the research team’s conclusion. I have a handful of strong memories in my life that originate from some fearful (and traumatic) events. This article definitely explains why those memories are there, even when I wish my brain would hold on to more boring stuff from time to time.

And as a question for you all:

Have you noticed the same thing in your lives–any fearful events you’ve seemingly being seared into memory?