The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain

by Daniel Gardner

In each case, the amygdala, a lump of brain shaped like an almond, will trigger the release of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. Your pupils dilate, your heart races, your muscles tense. This is the famous fight-or-flight response. It is intended to generate a quick reaction to immediate threats but it also contains one element intended to have a lasting effect: The hormones the amygdala triggers temporarily enhance memory function so the awful experience that triggered the response will be vividly encoded and remembered. Such traumatic memories last, and they are potent. Long after calm has returned, even years later in some cases, they are likely to be recalled with terrifying ease. And that fact alone will cause Gut to press the alarm that we experience as an uneasy sense of threat.