Animals have been important sources of both food and fear
throughout human history. As both predators and prey, they have
helped to shape our evolutionary path. Now, new evidence shows
that our brains are hardwired to respond quickly to images of
animals. According to this week’s Nature Neuroscience, the right
amygdala is specialized to effectively and quickly process
visual representations of animals. The amygdala has been a focus
of neurological research for a long time, as this structure is
involved in processing everything from abstract attributes to
particular faces. Now, a group of neuroscientists has tested
whether the amygdala responds differently than other parts of
the brain to various categories of stimuli, such as people,
landmarks, and animals. The researchers monitored 1445 single
neurons in three parts of the brain: the amygdala, the
hippocampus, and the entorhinal cortex. There was no difference
in how neurons in the hippocampus responded to these different
images, and neurons in the entorhina