Agoraphobia Articles

Causes and Development of Agoraphobia

The Role of the Amygdala in Agoraphobia

by Stephen Price

There has been a recent focus on the amygdala when it comes to explaining the cause of agoraphobia and panic disorder. There have also been some "new" treatment programs for agoraphobia on the market that claim to interrupt a certain function of the amygdala.

So what is this thing called the amygdala? Is it really important to recovery from agoraphobia and panic disorder?

The amygdala is a small structure located deep inside the brain of both humans and animals. The amygdala plays a significant role in panic disorder and agoraphobia because it houses the body's fear (or "fight or flight") response.

Neuroscientists tell us that when the body is confronted by a perceived threat, danger signals are sent to two places in the brain:

  • The cerebral cortex
  • The amygdala

The cerebral cortex houses cognitive functions of the brain. The signal sent to the cerebral cortex is sent in the form of information about the threat. The information about the perceived threat is analyzed cognitively in the cerebral cortex. In other words, this is the part of the brain you use to think about things consciously.

The amygdala, which houses the fear response, is more involuntary and requires no conscious thought. When danger signals are sent to the amygdala, it sets off the body’s “fight or flight” response to prepare the body to respond to the threat before you have a chance to think.

In other words, the fear response activates before you have a chance to decide if the threat is real. The “fight or flight” response is just a panic attack when it is set off in the absence of real danger (when you don’t need to fight or flee).

Two factors make the amygdala a powerful contributor in the development of agoraphobia:

  • The amygdala creates indelible (permanent) emotional memories and associations, or so neuroscientists believe. In other words, it is largely responsible for conditioned, irrational fear.
  • The amygdala activates the “fight or flight” response before you have a chance to think - faster than the cerebral cortex can analyze the information about the perceived threat. In many cases, it sets off a false alarm (or panic attack).

This means that treatment for agoraphobia needs to include a method for countering the “fight or flight” response, set off by the amygdala that does not take a lot of thinking.

If you can train yourself to interrupt the amygdala’s fear response with a conditioned relaxation reflex, then you are on your way to short circuiting panic attacks and overcoming agoraphobia.

But developing a conditioned reflex , like a relaxation reflex to counter the “fight or flight” response takes consistent practice over time, and research on the amygdala has not led to any overnight cures for agoraphobia despite what some self-help authors might claim.