The Role Of The Human Amygdala In Activating Feelings Of Fear In Haunted Houses

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The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of the human amygdala in activating feelings of fear, and the impact of a damaged human amygdala on these feelings. The hypothesis is that with no amygdala, SM would be prevented from feeling fear, as the chain of events that initiates that feeling would be unsuccessful in starting.

The researchers subjected SM to experiences which would normally make an individual scared, and they noted her emotional state. The first experience was being confronted by spiders and snakes. The investigators also recorded SM’s degree of fear by telling her to rate how scared she was on a scale from 0 to 10. 0 meaning no fear felt, and 10 meaning she was absolutely terrified. The second experience was visiting a haunted house. This house was filled with scary decorations and music, and had individuals in costumes of ghosts and monsters. Again, SM was told to rate her degree of fear on a scale of 0 to 10. The last experience was being shown 10 videos which were meant to scare people. Clips which were created to cause additional feeling such as anger and surprise, were also shown between the scary videos. Researchers watched how SM acted whist watching these films, and recorded her degree of fear caused by them. Lastly, the investigators told SM to fill out eight questionnaires that included questions spanning from irrational fears to the fear of dying. SM answered these several times over three years. SM was also given a device to measure her feelings, and was told at three random times a day, over three months, to record her current feelings on a 5-point scale which included fifty different emotions.

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The findings of this investigation showed that when visiting the pet shop, SM exhibited a high degree of curiosity towards the spiders and snakes, but little fear. Again, in the haunted house, SM showed a high level of excitement, leading the group and laughing at the monsters. When watching the scary films SM said she felt no fear, but whilst watching the other videos she said she felt high degrees of the expected feeling. In the general questionnaires, SM’s results showed very little fear. When measuring SM’s everyday feelings, her levels of fear was extremely low, and for all other feelings, they were very varied.

There are two main conclusions from this investigation. The first is that damage to the human amygdala has a direct link to highly decreased levels of fear. The second is that although, the levels of fear are affected, the damaged human amygdala has no effects on any of the other emotions expressed by an individual.

There were a few aspects that the researchers missed out in this investigation. The first is that the researchers only studied one individual; therefore, they could not compare their results of SM to anyone else with damage to their amygdala. Also, they did not have any data from healthy individuals.

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