The article discusses the amygdala and how it induces fear in humans. Feinstein et al. (2011) sought to analyze specifically how fear is induced and experienced by a person with an impaired amygdala. There was only one female participant, called SM, who had bilateral amygdala damage. The authors define fear induction as exposure to a stimulus that elicits a fearful state in a subject. However, fear experience is subjective, which is why the researchers had to rely on SM’s self-report (Feinstein et al., 2011).
The authors conducted several fear-exposure and experience experiments on SM to examine how an individual with an amygdala lesion would react to and experience different stimuli. It is important to note that SM can feel almost all emotions, but she is incapable of feeling fear. Whenever SM was exposed to a trigger that should have induced fear, she would respond with intense curiosity and an exploratory attitude.
The key problem was that she did not exhibit a normal avoidance response. This indicates that, in a person with a properly functioning amygdala, fear induction involves two major components: avoidance and arousal. SM’s case shows that the amygdala is primarily responsible for the avoidance or caution part, whereas the other component is not tied to this brain structure (Feinstein et al., 2011).
Hence, a normal fear response inclines a subject to flee a fear trigger and to pay close attention to it. It is evident why this would be the case, since evolutionarily this type of reaction would improve survival odds. A fear trigger is a source of danger, such as a predator, that tends to hide; thus, potential prey needs to be attentive to its movements. In addition, prey needs to run away from it and maintain a safe distance to avoid becoming its victim. The same type of observation also applies to the fear experience itself: there must be some excitement or arousal about the fear trigger to be more attentive to it.
Reference
Feinstein, J. S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A. R., & Tranel, D. (2011). The human amygdala and the induction and experience of fear. Current Biology, 21(1), 34-38.