Amygdala (biological explanation) Flashcards
Structure of the amygdala
The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure in the brain. There are two amygdalae which are each located close to the hippocampus, in the frontal portion of the temporal lobe.
Why are the amygdalae essential?
They are essential to your ability to feel certain emotions and to perceive them in other people. This includes fear and many changes it causes to the body.
The amygdala is also essential in fear conditioning and positive, emotional learning, being activated in responses to fearful and sad facial expressions. This helps to understand the association between defensive behaviour and emotions such as fear and anxiety.
Amygdala being a cause of violent criminal behaviour
Reduced functioning of the amygdala can lead to having blunted emotions and engaging in colder and calculated hostile behaviours.
Damage to the amygdala can result in lessoned fear and a lessoned perception of danger.
Responses elicited from the amygdala inhibit rational thoughts when damaged and if frontal regions are damaged too, then if won’t supress the overly affected responses, leading to criminal behaviour.
The amygdala regulates expression of emotion and emotional memory working alongside other parts. Lack of regulation could potentially lead to anger outbursts as this is not regulated, leading to harsh reactions such as violent crimes like murder.
It helps to store memories of events and emotions so that an individual may be able to recognise similar events in the future. Low levels of amygdala activity would mean that they can’t recognise similar events so can’t learn from past mistakes, more like to reoffend - increased chances of recidivism
Function of left and right side of the amygdala
The left amygdala is associated with sustained emotional and verbal processing. Less activity in this would mean that emotions are processed slowly or not at all, leading to a lack of empathy. It is linked to understand emotions within reward and punishment. When scared the left side is very active.
The right amygdala is associated with visual and dynamic emotional analysis. High levels of this may mean that emotions such as anger have a much higher rate, leading to outbursts. It is linked to facial recognition in emotoins, aggressiveness and sexual desire.
Larson (2000)
Implicated the amygdala as an important brain structure involved in emotion regulation and violence. They suggested that too much or too little activation of the amygdala may contribute towards either excessive negative affect or decreases sensitivity to social cues that regulate emotions. Therefore, decreased sensitivity to social cues may mean that crimes are committed due to a lack of emotions.
Blair (2007)
Suggested that psychopaths also had an impairment of the amygdala. They tend to show reduced neural response to threatening stimuli, reduced emotional responses in anticipation of punishment, reduced emotional responses to imagined threatening events. Therefore, this means that they don’t fear the consequences that the crime will give them.
Yang (2009)
Found significant correlations between those with reduced volumes and psychopathy scores. Found a smaller volume in the amygdala meant more antisocial behaviour and less control. This supports the idea that there is a link between the amygdala and aggression explaining criminal behaviour.
