ABSTRACT

To maximize the ability to avoid predation, we need the ability to encode and retrieve fear-producing memories. What are some of the processes ensuring this will occur?

Aside from fleeing and fighting, avoiding similar threatening situations in the future is important for survival. What is needed is a way to store information useful to survival, sustain its clarity, and endow it with a low threshold to recall by similar circumstances. Central to these abilities is the interaction between the amygdala and hippocampus. It is the amygdala’s influence on hippocampal-directed encoding and storage of emotional memories that allows them to remain sharp and readily retrievable.