Does the Amygdala Hijack Your Brain?

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 called the amygdala is the fear center of the brain, which often overreacts to stressful events and “hijacks” the rest of the brain. It is said to do this by turning off the regions involved in rational thinking, such as our prefrontal cortex, and leaving us at the mercy of our untamed emotional impulses.

This idea was based on the available neuroscientific evidence at the time. Early neuroscience studies showed that the amygdala is involved in learning about things that might cause us pain and in mobilizing our fight-or-flight (fear) response to cope with these threats. At the same time, other studies showed that the prefrontal cortex is involved in cognitive abilities such as memory, reasoning, and inhibitory control. Weaving these ideas together, the amygdala hijack idea seemed like a reasonable account of how the brain might work during highly stressful events and why we might struggle to behave intelligently.

But over the past two decades, we’ve learned a lot more about how the brain works, and a new picture is emerging in which the amygdala generally works in concert—not in conflict–with the prefrontal cortex to support intelligent behavior. In other words, the amygdala may not deserve such a bad reputation!

When I started working at Stanford University, Carol Dweck and I decided to summarize all of this new scientific evidence in a paper that was recently published. Here are a few highlights.

First, while it is true that the amygdala is involved in detecting threatening events that might trigger fear, we now know that it is just as involved in processing rewarding events. So, what is it actually doing? Simply put, the amygdala helps us detect and appropriately respond to any type of event that we might care about (e.g., things related to our need for physical safety, positive social relationships, or competence/achievement). In other words, the amygdala signals whether something is worth pursuing because it may support our needs and generate pleasure or should be avoided because it might hinder our needs and generate pain. So, the amygdala is not just a fear center of the brain. (In fact, there is no single brain region that is the fear center of the brain.)

A second key observation from recent studies is that the amygdala plays a much more central role in intelligent behavior than previously thought. For example, when the amygdala is damaged, individuals tend to ignore the future consequences of their choices, are less likely to invest the effort to achieve the best outcomes, and are less likely to thrive in social contexts. Additionally, studies have shown that by signaling what is important to us, the amygdala actually helps us to pay attention to and remember important information. So, rather than derail our ability to think clearly and intelligently, the amygdala is actually crucial for these abilities.

A final observation is that studies have more often found a cooperative rather than antagonistic relationship between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. For example, activation in the prefrontal cortex related to a task at hand is stronger, and task performance is better when the prefrontal cortex receives input from the amygdala.

Coming back to the title of this post, neuroscientific findings over the past two decades suggest that, no, the amygdala probably does not hijack your brain. While it’s certainly true that intense emotions can sometimes lead us to do things that are not wise, this may not be because of a battle in which the amygdala dominates the prefrontal cortex. In fact, intense emotion is sometimes triggered by how we interpret situations, which involves the prefrontal cortex.

The takeaway message is that the amygdala and prefrontal cortex generally work together to help us navigate a complex world. Without one or the other, we would be lost and make poor decisions. Perhaps this is less exciting than a mental battle royale, but we would be in serious trouble if our different brain regions could not play well together!