the amygdala is consists of a whole of tiny little nuclei and we're gonna just group him into
a couple of two big clusters the cortical medial and the basal lateral the cortical medial group is
associated with the olfactory bulb it has gets a lot of information from the olfactory system and
then sends that information to the nuclei of the brainstem and the hypothalamus this is one of the
ways that olfactory information can have an impact on your your visceral systems so if something's
really particularly stinky you don't want to eat it it's one of those safety things and it also
helps you learn that if you've ever had something if you have ever ingested something that smelled
funny you don't eat it again because you remember the visceral responses that you had to the first
time it's also cortical medial group because it goes to brain stem and then on to spinal cord
as well is one of the reasons is one of the ways that the amygdala is connected to your
sympathetic nervous system and so we've talked about the amygdala being part of your fear or
anger and so if you are see something scary there is something that's dangerous in your environment
that cortical medial group part of the amygdala is what's going to project to your brainstem and down
to your spinal cord and activate your sympathetic autonomic nervous system the basal lateral group
is a little bit more intellectual it gets it receives all kinds of sensory information so
auditory visual somatosensory all of this kind of information is coming from the association
cortex and the thalamus and the prefrontal cortex all of this is being sent to the amygdala and it
helps you recognize dangerous situations so the example I always use for my students on campus
is if you see an axe and it's leaning up against a wood pile it's not scary it's a tool it's a tool
to split the wood to put it in the wood stove tonight make a nice cozy fire on a winter's
night if you see an X and it's in the hands of somebody wearing a hockey mask you know to run
because you've seen all those scary movies where the guy in the hockey mask runs around
with an axe and kills all the teenagers so the basolateral group is part of the amygdala that
collects sensory information and puts it into a context that tells you whether it should you
should be afraid of it or whether it's dangerous or whether it's safe the amygdala plays a huge
role in post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD because it's connected to all of the sensory
information and it's connected to your hippocampus so you remember if you start to put certain sounds
or certain smells or certain visual stimuli together with something very dangerous or painful
that becomes a learned experience once you see or experience some of those sensory stimuli in a
different situation it can still trigger the same emotional response because the amygdala says if I
hear that loud noise I know that it's a gunshot or it's an explosion or it's some something bad
is happening and then the next time even though you're not in the same stressful environment where
those two stimuli were linked you still might put it together and remember what happened the
first time you heard that loud noise there's a lot of research going on these days trying to
understand the role of the amygdala in in PTSD and how that we can help people kind of unlearn
some of those responses or at least learn how to take a step back and realize that you're not in
the same environment and so that the same stimuli don't necessarily mean you're in danger and it's
a lot of them a lot of cognitive therapy and a lot of retraining your brain so that is one of
the reasons that the amygdala is so important it keeps you safe in normal situations but sometimes
it can be over overstimulated and cause unwanted stressful responses so what do I want you to
know about your limbic system I want you to know what the components of it are and what
its function is so what is the function of your limbic system where is the amygdala what happens
if you stimulate the amygdala and what happens if you remove the amygdala and then I want you to be
able to describe the functions the basic functions of the two sub regions of the amygdala that do we
discussed in this lecture once you get all this under control you're ready for the assessment