Terror
The Amygdala
Since the 1990s, terror has been localized in tiny pathways between nerve cells in a small, almond-shaped clump of tissue called the amygdala. Joseph LeDoux—an authority on the emotional brain—observed, "We have shown that the amygdala is like the hub in the centre of a wheel of fear. If we understand the pathways of fear, it will ultimately lead to better control." Part of the primitive brain, the amygdala seems to have developed early, steering organisms away from poisons and predators. Some researchers associate it with conditions like depression and autism. Specific fears can be "burned" into it and stimulate a trigger reaction or recurrent terror. Through research into the amygdala and neurocircuitry, some hope that terror, man's oldest adversary, will be conquered, provoking the question: Will there be such a thing as a hero in the future?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burke, Edmund. Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Edited by David P. Womersley. New York: Penguin, 1999. Primary source dealing with "terror" as an incarnation of what is sublime in nature.
Carter, Rita. Mapping the Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998. Cogent, popular study of how the brain works, with sections on the amygdala or "fear center."
Cohn, Norman Rufus Colin. The Pursuit of the Millennium. London: Secker and Warburg, 1957. An authoritative look at the "panic cults" and apocalyptic terrors of the Middle Ages and early modern periods.
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. New York: Macmillan, 1968. A gripping account of Stalin's purges.
Fumagalli, Vito. Landscapes of Fear: Perceptions of Nature and the City in the Middle Ages. Translated by Shayne Mitchell. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1994. Enlightening psychogeography of the medieval world.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Treatise on realpolitik in the sixteenth century.
Newman, Paul. A History of Terror. Stroud, U.K.: Sutton, 2001. Accessible survey of the various manifestations of terror and panic against a historical backdrop.
Schmitt, Jean-Claude. Ghosts of the Middle Ages. Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1998. Shows how "ghosts" were harnessed to the chariot of religion.
Paul Newman
Additional topics
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Swim bladder (air bladder) to ThalliumTerror - The Politics Of Oppression, The Culture Of Terror, Gods Of Terror, NiccolÒ Machiavelli, The Amygdala