All articles tagged with #amygdala
A mouse study identifies a nose-to-brain circuit in which nasal airflow frequency modulates anxiety-like behavior via olfactory sensory neurons, the olfactory bulb, perirhinal cortex, and the posterior basolateral amygdala; slow nasal breathing reduced anxiety in mice, suggesting a potential noninvasive approach to treating anxiety, though human relevance remains to be confirmed.
A small study found that an in-phase pattern of dual-site transcranial alternating current stimulation, applied during a task that required overriding automatic emotional responses, strengthened the connection between the lateral prefrontal and sensorimotor cortices and reduced amygdala influence in socially anxious adults. Participants with stronger neural responses showed greater improvement, while anti-phase stimulation offered no consistent benefit. The findings suggest rhythm-based brain stimulation could augment exposure therapy for social anxiety, but results varied across individuals and require larger, more personalized studies.
Traumatic memories are not stored or recalled like ordinary memories; during trauma, the amygdala stays highly active while the hippocampus is overwhelmed, causing memories to break into sensory fragments and to be relived as if the threat is happening now. This non-linear recall can look inconsistent or even be misread as lying, especially by lawyers or clinicians. A trauma‑informed approach—empathy, careful language, and awareness that memory can be fragmented—improves support in healthcare, legal settings, and everyday relationships and can aid survivors’ healing.
Neuroimaging links larger amygdala and stronger responses to unfamiliar faces with conservative leanings and threat sensitivity, but large replication studies show the effect is small and not diagnostic; the amygdala may function as a significance detector rather than a fear center, habituation reduces responses to known faces, and cross-group contact generally reduces prejudice, suggesting biology partly influences discomfort with difference but isn’t destiny.
New research suggests migraines are linked to accelerated brain aging: migraine patients show a global brain-age gap of about 4.24 years and 66 regions with higher aging, concentrated in memory- and emotion-related areas (prefrontal/frontal/parietal/temporal cortices and the amygdala). The findings come from cross-sectional MRI analysis and do not prove causation; results may not generalize to all migraine sufferers or reflect cognitive performance without further testing.
In SM, a woman with Urbach-Wiethe disease loses fear due to bilateral amygdala damage; despite this, she experiences physiological arousal and can engage with danger, and carbon-dioxide challenges reveal fear can be triggered via non-amygdala pathways, prompting scientists to rethink what courage and threat perception truly mean.
Using fMRI data from about 5,800 preteens in the ABCD study, researchers found that baseline amygdala response to emotional faces uniquely predicted social health two years later, with high reactivity linked to more peer involvement in girls but less in boys, suggesting sex-specific brain development trajectories.
University of Tokyo researchers identify a hippocampus–amygdala circuit that binds the memory of a familiar mouse to fear, causing avoidance after aggressive encounters; using optogenetics they could strengthen or erase this aversion, with the nucleus accumbens helping translate memory and fear into avoidance. While demonstrated in mice, the findings offer clues about how social memory and negative emotions interact, with potential relevance for anxiety and depression in humans.
A study of 635 adults using fMRI found that the age at which abuse occurs matters for later emotion processing: abuse before age 13 is linked to heightened hippocampal activity during rapid, non-conscious emotion processing, while abuse in adolescence (13–18) is linked to heightened amygdala activity during conscious emotion processing. These patterns persisted across various mental health diagnoses and healthy controls, suggesting the timing of adversity leaves lasting neural marks and could guide targeted interventions, though retrospective reporting and cross-sectional design limit conclusions.
A 128-participant fMRI study from Guangzhou University links the type and timing of childhood maltreatment to lasting neuro-immune changes: early childhood abuse (ages 1–11) modulates amygdala–IL-8 coupling during fear learning, late adolescence neglect (ages 12–18) reshapes vmPFC–IL-8 connections, and early neglect alters amygdala–vmPFC and hippocampus–vmPFC connectivity with IL-17; the findings support a maturation-matched vulnerability and point to therapies that target both fear circuits and systemic inflammation.
A study in iScience links imbalanced activity of a Grik4/GluK4-rich neuron group in the basolateral amygdala to anxiety-like and social withdrawal behaviors in mice. Restoring this balance to improve signaling with centrolateral inhibitory neurons reversed anxiety and social deficits in both a genetic model and wild-type mice with high anxiety, though some memory issues persisted, hinting at broader circuit targets for affective disorders.
Finnish researchers used TSPO-PET and MRI to scan 14 long COVID patients, 11 healthy controls, and 13 MS patients, finding no evidence of widespread brain inflammation in long COVID and suggesting inflammatory activity may be higher earlier after infection and fade over time. Notably, more severe symptoms correlated with increased activity in emotion-regulation regions like the amygdala and hippocampus, pointing to emotional processing rather than ongoing neuroinflammation as a potential driver and hinting that treatments could focus on stress management and emotional regulation rather than solely anti-inflammatory approaches. The study is published in the Journal of Neurology (2026).
A large UK Biobank MRI study found that among 2,122 shift workers, there is a modest, symmetrical loss of brain volume in the right thalamus and left amygdala (areas tied to sleep regulation, emotion, and memory) with associated white‑matter changes. The negative association with cognitive performance is small, and the researchers caution interpretation. Importantly, ceasing shift work was linked to partial recovery of brain volume within about 2.5 years, suggesting a potential reversible window, though the study focused on older adults and applicability to younger workers remains uncertain.
A University of Turku study using PET and MRI found no evidence of widespread brain inflammation in long COVID patients compared with healthy controls. Inflammation may be higher earlier after infection and fade over time. More severe symptoms correlated with increased activity in emotion-related regions (hippocampus and amygdala), suggesting treatments focusing on stress management and emotional regulation rather than solely anti-inflammatory approaches.
An analysis of UK Biobank data found that people who work shifts show a small but detectable volume loss in the left amygdala and right thalamus compared with non-shift workers, with greater loss at higher shift-work frequency. In participants who ceased shift work, the brain-volume decline halted within about 2.4 years and may show slight recovery; additional microstructural changes and lower scores on memory, processing speed, and fluid intelligence were observed. The authors caution that causality cannot be established and the effects are small, noting the UK Biobank sample is healthier and less diverse than the general population.