Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: smart on 10/12/2015 13:26:32

Title: Is fear actively suppressing emotional learning ?
Post by: smart on 10/12/2015 13:26:32

Is fear suppressing the generation of new memories and learning ? If so, how can fear conditioning can stimulates learning of aversive events ? It is possible to deprogram the consciousness of aversive memories in order to acquire new types of learning?

Title: Re: Is fear actively suppressing emotional learning ?
Post by: evan_au on 10/12/2015 20:19:51

Quote from: tkadm30

Is fear actively suppressing emotional learning ?

I would say that fear causes (fearful) emotional learning, and the stress involved discourages higher forms of learning.
Learning about emotional events occurs to some extent in the amygdala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala#Emotional_learning), near the brain stem.
Higher learning occurs in the pre-frontal cortex.

Some research is taking place on emotion-driven machine learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BELBIC). Time will tell whether computers become emotional learners - and whether instructors who attempt to teach by fear and intimidation will produce stunted software packages.

Title: Re: Is fear actively suppressing emotional learning ?
Post by: cheryl j on 03/01/2016 06:59:42

Of course, if what you happen to be afraid of isn't connected to the content of what you are also trying to learn, I could see that fear interfering - because a part of your brain thinks you are paying attention to the wrong thing and ignoring some more important threat.