Thoughtful feelings

Abstract

In this My Word, Joseph LeDoux describes how his four-decade career exploring how non-conscious processes involving the amygdala detect and respond to danger has contributed to the 'amygdala fear center' meme, a view he does not endorse. The conscious experience of fear, he tells us here, is not wired into the amygdala, but is instead a cognitively assembled understanding that you are in harm's way based on non-conscious memories, schemas, and mental models.