amygdala

That's where you have the executive dysfunction, working memory.

And the other is the amygdala, hippocampus, memory consolidation.

Amygdala is the brain's emotional threat and reward center.

That's the emotional memory.

That's pretty interesting.

But I think what you're saying is providing a place where somebody takes the kind of like, I know this stuff, but really understanding it.

Because I think the other thing that I'm hearing, at least my experience has been understanding something so that you can actually communicate about it simply and not make it into kind of neuro babble and just be throwing out words about Amygdala, limbic brain, prefrontal cortex, whatever the jargon is that somebody might be using, but rather understand the whole mechanism so that they can use what they know to inform their curiosity maybe is another way of thinking about it.

So it really is about the application.

There is a lot of noise or even pollution around what the brain does or doesn't do from I'm a left brain person or the amygdala made me do it or whatever.

Our players tonight are going to be Johnny Rome, Josie Ingram, and John Calvert.

And we are going to be playing a Next Quest original TTRPG, Thoughts of the Amygdala.

This is something we've been working on as a group while we try to figure out a way to play a game like Dread that is mostly focused on the roleplay with a fun game mechanic online.

I will be putting an in-depth outline of the rules in the episode description, but the gist of it is this.

Their downstairs brain activates, then ours activates.

Amygdala meets amygdala.

And suddenly everybody is downstairs having a dance party.

No one is thinking, no one is listening, and we're often saying things we'll regret later.

And that's where your dashboard, your insula reads that dashboard.

It could be a little bit of nervous, nervousness, resentment, annoyance, whatever that feeling is that you're getting, your dashboard is reading that and trying to interpret it, right? And that message, not only does it go back to the amygdala because it's, Amygdala, insula is a two-way street.

So you're doing this.

But it also eventually, because there's a bit of a lag, goes to that free, let me say it again, prefrontal cortex, all these big biology words I'm trying to deal with.

This is where the amygdala is.

So it's a small region.

Amygdala is from Greek for nut because it's like almond shaped.

And what was found is that this region, when you trigger it or when you lesion it, all sorts of experiments, it really determines the emotional reaction, especially fear.

So if you take like a little animal and you stimulate that region, the animal will freeze.

And it's the first step that's very helpful, which is to actually name an emotion.

It's been shown that naming an emotion actually reduces amygdala arousal.

Amygdala is a source of many of the threat emotions.

And naming emotion isn't the total process, but it is an important first step.

Many of us were not brought up to have words for emotion.

So how does the brain kickstart the whole stress response? So it starts with amygdala.

So when we talk about amygdala, let's break it down a little bit more.

Amygdala is a paired almond-shaped cluster of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain, one in each hemisphere.

It deals with emotion and fear, sends a message to the hypothalamus.

Now the question comes, what is a hypothalamus?