I wanted to mention Mindfulness because it was through learning about this topic and understanding some of background to it that I understood the effect of the amygdala and the role in triggering adrenaline as part of our fight or flight response.
One of the tenets of mindfulness is an idea that the amygdala – whilst being well suited to our previous incarnations as hunters and gathers, where real danger was much more a part of daily life – is nowadays maybe too reactive to the kind of general daily stresses that we confront. These stresses, whilst not life threatening, and not mostly requiring physical action, nevertheless trigger our amygdala and it's response.
One of the claims of mindfulness is that it helps to dampen this effect, meaning that with practice people can change the way their brain reacts to such stimuli.
It was thinking about this over-active amygdala that made me first imagine think about how the body might want to have a mechanism to dampen it in other ways too.
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