The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear | Hacker News Reader

The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear

sciencedirect.com

18 pointsgkya5 comments

> Ironically, [the patient] scared one of the [people dressed as] monsters [and tried to scare her in a famous haunted house for research purposes] when she poked it in the head because she was “curious” as to what it would feel like.

This article and the other few I'll link in this comment are about a condition of human amygdalae (a brain part), symptoms of which includes lack of fear.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdalae

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdalae#Fear

* http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com.tr/2013/02/extreme-f...

This is among the weirdest human conditions I've seen in my life, thus I had to submit it here. I ended up finding about the subject while reading another submission about schizophrenia[1], which is an awesome read.

The original title of the research is “The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear”, I chose to use this simpler and more provoking title as it highlights the interesting point: the lack of fear.

NoScript users: you'll see near-nothing on the page, (temporarily) enable JS in order to see the text. The website supplies a PDF download of the text, but it is written with a bold sans-serif font all through, so it is hard on eyes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7662957, http://theamericanscholar.org/what-killed-my-sister/?key=559...

edit: formatting

Why would you downvote this comment?

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7619287. Your comment was a good case of this. I gave it a corrective upvote and the problem went away.

(In general, please don't comment about comments being downvoted, even when it's annoying and/or mystifying. As the guidelines say, it's off-topic, never helps, and makes for boring reading.)

I understand this guideline, but i disagree. I think would be great if some downvoters could explain themselves. As in this case. Indeed, who would downvote this comment?

And it is hard to notice one or two downvotes, so is up to the user to ask/announce this. Downvote productive and thoughtfull comments, specially when the comment is taking a position against the parent, is very nocive to the quality of the debate. And there is no guarantee that would be a "corrective upvote" as in an invisible hand of justice.

So I have this idea that complain about injust downvotes may be off-topic (as thousands of other kinds of comments), but should help the quality of the comments if it was more encouraged, the same for "being boring".

Has any similar research been done on those with panic disorder. Do they have an over-active amygdala, for example?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com