Amygdala in Overdrive

Posted on April 11, 2011 in Anxiety Frustration Paranoids Propaganda

My [[amygdala]] has been in overdrive. Every morning between 7 and 7:30, I wake up with my breastbone trying to break out of my chest. My thoughts immediately turn to politics and the Tea Party. I don’t think this is paranoia because I don’t look out my window to see if [[John Boehner]] and [[Eric Cantor]] have dispatched minions to watch my condo. The future is my topic. What will become of [[Medicare]]? What about the [[Social Security]] trust fund that my wife and I have paid into all these years? Will the Republicans find a way to steal the next election? Will progressives be stupid and sit this one out because they have not received a perfect package for their pains? Wave the bloody shirt and I am on Twitter screaming about it, trembling.

Recent studies suggest that our fears never go away: they are merely masked:

Fear is commonly investigated in mice by exposing them simultaneously to a neutral stimulus — a certain sound, for example — and an unpleasant one. This leads to the animals being frightened of the sound as well. Context plays an important role in this case: If the scaring sound is played repeatedly in a new context without anything bad happening, the mice shed their fear again. It returns immediately, however, if the sound is presented in the original, or even a completely novel context.

Deep in the amygdala, there are two groups of cells — one that generates the fear response and another that suppresses them. It’s a classic example of evolution’s shoddy engineering. When the suppression mechanism goes to work, it does not operate by stopping the fear response: it merely prevents it from being transmitted to other parts of the body. The fear is still there, waiting for the cells dedicated to suppressing it to drop their guard — as what happens when the sound is played in a novel context in the example above. Then the same old dreads run the show all over again.

I cannot help but tie this finding to another article I read recently about the amygdala. Scientists have discovered differences in the brains of liberals and conservatives. Your typical liberal has a larger [[anterior cingulate cortex]] which lets her pull concepts together and not be distracted by conflicting information. Conservatives have larger amygdalas, which researchers say makes them better able to “recognize a threat”.

My experience suggests that this is a politically correct way of saying that conservatives are often panic at the slightest implication that they are being threatened. Witness how they can be made to vote against their interests by campaigns based in racism or other types of hatred. Witness how some hoard guns beyond what they actually need to defend their homes ((I don’t own a gun nor have I ever needed one, even in some of the rough neighborhoods where I lived as a young man.)) . Witness how they allow military spending to overwhelm the federal budget even when specific programs prove to be unmanageable, unworkable, or a boondoggle ((If it is for “defense”, they’ll buy it. The amygdala doesn’t do well at discerning frauds.)) . Witness how they will stream to the polls if an appropriate [[robocall]] or commercial tells them that they are being threatened — even if this goes against all reason. Conservatives are eminently controllable by their fears. This has proven true in election after election.

The trick relies on a simple tactic: move conservatives out of the safe zone of discipline that they have surrounded themselves in to prevent their emotions from running wild. Conservatives are often better behaved in environments where they are taught to do as they are told — such as the military. Control of the emotions is vital. But change the context and the conservative is once more his old, fearful self. He might be a nice guy to everyone around him because he has been conditioned to be so, but remove that environment through bright flashing lights and loud voices preaching doom if the… ((Fill in the blank.)) are allowed to get the upper hand.

So liberals need to develop tricks to fight these tricks that turn good people into reckless fools. Sometimes we will need to use the fear. Sometimes we will need to train conservatives to ignore the lights and sounds, to become the true masters of their anxieties, their souls, and their political and economic destinies. The best society is one where the problem-solving power of the liberals and the threat detection power of the conservatives coexist to serve the whole.

This post is in response to Day 10 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Post Secret”