Have you ever wondered why you jump when you’re startled? Maybe you wonder why you have a harder time handling stress and anxiety than your friends and family do. Part of the reason might lie in your ...

Fear is an adaptive emotion that helps us cope with threatening situations. Deep within the temporal lobe of the brain is the amygdala, the most studied brain area involved in fear. The amygdala uses ...

In 1995, author Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack”–an idea that has subsequently appeared in countless blogs, self-help books, and videos. According to this idea, a part of the brain ...

When footage of free solo climber Alex Honnold scaling near-vertical rock faces without ropes circulates online, the reaction is almost universal. Disbelief, anxiety, and an instinctive tightening in ...

The amygdala can activate a person’s fight-or-flight response as a reaction to a real or perceived threat of danger. Amygdala hijack describes the perhaps unnecessary triggering of this response and ...