Frightening Movies
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brain region called the hippocampus, whereas implicit, not-necessarily-conscious emotional
memories are mediated by an area involving the amygdala (LeDoux, 1996). The hippocampus
mediates conscious processing, and is involved in appraising the situation and making sense of it.
The amygdala responds more quickly, even before the cause of alarm has reached our state of
awareness, and orchestrates more automatic responses, such as tensed muscles, blood pressure
and heart rate changes, and the release of adrenaline into the bloodstream. These reactions,
which contribute to the way our bodies feel when we are afraid, are part of the so-called "flight-
or-fight" response, which prepares us to defend ourselves from harm.
Citing studies involving species ranging from laboratory animals to humans, LeDoux
explains the process of fear conditioning: A laboratory rat exhibits a fearful reaction upon
receiving an electric shock. If the shock is paired with the sound of a tone, that tone comes to
elicit the fear reaction, even when the shock does not accompany it. Likewise, if a rabbit
encounters a fox (a predator) at a particular pond and escapes safely, it will avoid that pond in
the future, or, if it has no choice, it will express its fear by exhibiting timidity and hypervigilance
whenever it returns to that location. Similarly, if a man has a serious, traumatic automobile
accident during which the horn of his car gets stuck on, he is likely to experience bodily
reactions associated with fear in future situations when hearing the sound of a horn. The horn
may, in fact, remind him of the accident, and he may consciously associate his feelings with that
event. However, over time, he may forget about the association of the horn with the accident,
but still have physiological responses associated with fear whenever he hears a horn sound. In
these cases, the implicit (nonconscious) emotional memory system has been activated to create
the bodily experience of emotion. Other contextual features of the accident, that may never have
been consciously associated with it, may also trigger the implicit emotional memory – a
Convention