Brain Matters the Podcast

Want to see the article that inspired our guest Marie Monfils to study fear memories? Read the article by Joseph LeDoux and maybe find some inspiration for yourself!

Despite millennia of preoccupation with every facet of human emotion, we are still far from explaining in a rigorous physiological sense this part of our mental experience.  Neuroscientists have, in modern times, been especially concerned with the neural basis of cognitive processes such as perception and memory. They have for the most part ignored the brain’s role in emotion.

Yet in recent years, interest in this mysterious mental terrain has surged. Catalyzed by breakthroughs in understanding the neural basis of cognition and by an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the anatomical organization and physiology of the brain, investigators have begun to tackle the problem of emotion. One quite rewarding area of research has been the inquiry into the relation between memory and emotion. Much of this examination has involved studies of one particular emotion -fear- and the manner in which specific events or stimuli come, through individual learning experiences, to evoke this state. Scientists, myself included, have been able to determine the way in which the brain shapes how we form memories about this basic, but significant, emotional event. We call this process “emotional memory." By uncovering the neural pathways through which a situation causes a creature to learn about fear, we hope to elucidate the general mechanisms of this form of memory. Because many human mental disorders- including anxiety, phobia, post-traumatic stress syndrome and panic attack- involve malfunctions in the brain’s ability to control fear, studies of the neural basis of this emotion may help us further understand and treat these disturbances.