#amygdala

#amygdala

You know that moment when someone asks you a question in a meeting and your mind goes completely blank? Or when you're sitting in a high-stakes presentation and you feel like you can't move, can't speak, can't think? While it can feel like your mind and body are totally betraying you, what's actually happening is that your nervous system is doing exactly what it's designed to do when it perceives a threat.

To cope in uncertain environments, animals must balance their actions between using current resources and searching for new ones1. This exploration-exploitation dilemma has been studied extensively in paradigms involving positive outcomes, and neural correlates have been identified in frontal cortices and subcortical structures2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, including the amygdala12. Importantly, exploration is just as essential for survival or well-being when trying to avoid negative outcomes, yet we do not know whether the single-neuron mechanisms that drive exploration are shared across positive and negative environments.