This is actually an important clinical factor: in order to encode a new set of thoughts of spiders into her cortex, Darlene needed to activate her amygdala and hippocampus to the same extent (or higher) than when she had encoded her original fearful memories. In this sense, the more the midbrain “heats up” through the experience of intense emotion during exposure therapy, the more readily the new memory will be scorched into your brain.
