Survival, danger perception and the amygdala

Fear is an emotion expressed by a subject which is under a threat or danger to secure itself. It causes the “Fight or Flight” sensation in the being which is under attack. In previous studies, it is found that amygdala is the central unit in brain for fear stimuli. Here we have done two different neuroscience studies on fear with ultra high field MRI. Case 1: With ultra high field MRI brain images we visualised that there is a faster and short pathway to amygdala. Fear stimuli activate the amygdale even when the images are shown for a very short time of 50ms with which conscious recognition is not possible. This shows brain reacts to fear even before we recognise it consciously. Case 2: We investigated the influence of low and high spatial frequency fearful images in amygdala because of the contradiction in some previous studies. We compared low, high and broad spatial frequency images of fearful averted gaze faces, snakes and objects and found both high and low spatial frequency fear images affect the amygdale in the similar manner