amygdala
UK/əˈmɪɡ.də.lə/
amygdala noun: each one of the two regions of the brain, located as a pair in the medial temporal lobe, believed to play a key role in processing emotions, such as fear and pleasure, in both animals and humans.
Noun
amygdala (plural amygdalas or amygdalae)
- Each one of the two regions of the brain, located as a pair in the medial temporal lobe, believed to play a key role in processing emotions, such as fear and pleasure, in both animals and humans.
- There is experimental evidence showing that cortisol restrains the intensity and duration of the emergency reaction to stress, and catecholamines have been shown to enhance emotional memory in the amygdala (see subsection on "Noradrenaline"). Thus, individuals lacking cortisol would overstore...2006, Marcus Lira Brandão, Frederico Guilherme Graeff, Neurobiology of Mental Disorders, page 36
- Cognitive scientists distinguish between normal risk-assessment decisions, which activate the reward-prediction regions of the brain, and decisions made amid extreme uncertainty, which generate activity in the amygdala.2009 February 12, David Brooks, “The Worst-Case Scenario”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 09 Nov 2020
amygdala meaning in Kannada and Persian
amygdala in Kannada
- ಮೆಂಡಿಕೆ, ತಲ್ಲಣಗೂಡು, ತಲ್ಲಣಮಿದುಳು
amygdala in Persian
- brain region
- بادامک bādāmak
Examples of amygdala in a sentence
- Notice the placement of the amygdala in the high-field atlas with basolateral, basomedial, and centromedial subfields.
- When most people try to decode the emotion in a pair of eyes, their amygdalae light up.
- The mechanism of muricide behavior probably involves a discrete area of the brain, the amygdala.
Forms of amygdala
| plural | amygdalas |
|---|---|
| plural | amygdalae |
Origin of amygdala
Learned borrowing from Latin amygdala (“almond, amygdala”), from Ancient Greek ἀμυγδάλη (amugdálē, “almond”), named as such due to its shape. Doublet of almond, amygdale, and mandorla.
Words formed from amygdala
Questions about amygdala
- What does amygdala mean?
- Amygdala means each one of the two regions of the brain, located as a pair in the medial temporal lobe, believed to play a key role in processing emotions, such as fear and pleasure, in both animals and humans.
- What is amygdala in Kannada?
- Amygdala in Kannada is ಮೆಂಡಿಕೆ, ತಲ್ಲಣಗೂಡು, ತಲ್ಲಣಮಿದುಳು. See Amygdala meaning in Kannada.
- What part of speech is amygdala?
- Amygdala is a noun.
- How do you pronounce amygdala?
- Amygdala is pronounced /əˈmɪɡ.də.lə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of amygdala?
- The plural of amygdala is amygdalas.
Words near amygdala in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: amygdala (page history and authors); amygdala (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-amygdala.ogg.
Cite this entry: “amygdala.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/amygdala. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.