Friday 16 September 2016

Brain Surgery To Remove Amygdala Leads To Woman’s ‘Hyper Empathy’

From here:

The new case comes in contrast to previous observations of people who endured damage to the amygdala and suffered emotional deficits. In a 2001 study involving 22 people who had parts of their temporal lobe removed, researchers found that people with more extensive damage to the amygdala performed worse in learning emotional facial expressions.

This is very interesting! It suggests to me that empathy is not created by the amygdala even though a dysfunctional amygdala can impair ones empathy. That is consistent with my view that the brain doesn't create consciousness, it merely modulates it.

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