Amygdala – a brain part where anxiety, fear and panic originate from. It’s sometimes called Anxiety Brain.
It does not really matter what the real cause of you fear and anxiety is. The fact is that it all the time expresses itself throughout your whole body. There is no chance that we could get intellectually afraid. Fear and anxiety always connects with our bodies.
So how is this feeling of fear, anxiety and panic created? What happens inside of our brain, what happens inside of what I like to call our anxiety brain?
The scientists have moved very far in the area of neurophysiology of anxiety and fear in the last few decades. Just imagine for one second that you get back home from work, it’s late, you open your house’s door and suddenly you see a moving shadow inside one of your rooms. In a split of a second the whole chemistry in your body changes. It could be a threat to your life, so your neural circuits, which evolved during thousands and thousands of years, start their job. And usually it happens much faster than you can rationally think about what really is happening.
So the signal goes from your eyes and your ears to the brain stem and from there it travels to the thalamus. At this place the traveling impulse branches. One part of the signal moves to the part of the brain where it will be interpreted and the other part of the signal moves to you anxiety brain – amygdala – and hippocampus. Although amygdale is a small part of your brain, kind of reminding a shape of almond it is really important for your everyday life. Hippocampus is a part of your brain that is responsible for remembering things and your memories. Also, when nerve signal reaches hippocampus this part of your brain will analyze it with the memories it has already stored to find out if this is a threatening situation.
The signal journey will stop right there, if you are sure that stimulus means nothing. However, if you are not really sure about it, you brain will go into “warning” mode. Then that impulse will be sent forth and back between hippocampus, you temporal lobe and amygdala (the anxiety brain); your whole body becomes alert and you are prepared for the worst.
Like I already mentioned your emotional brain (amygdale) plays a major role in this whole process. This is a place where anxiety, fear and panic originate from. If there was a way to physically remove amygdala out of your brain, you wouldn’t feel fear, anxiety or panic at all. Furthermore you wouldn’t be able to tell if people around you are scared or not.
Your anxiety brain is always on alert, sorting every signal received to see if you are facing anything threatening so it can prepare your body to survive. But if some signal will be recognized as a threatening, this little almond-shaped anxiety brain will signal other parts of your brain to put those scary expressions on your face and stop everything what you were doing in order to fully concentrate on the possible danger.