AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Explanation: Joseph LeDoux described a “low road” of emotional processing, whereby sensations of arousing stimuli pass directly from the thalamus to the amygdala (as opposed to the slower, more deliberate “high road, ” in which stimuli are first processed by the cortex before being passed to the amygdala).

Detailed explanation-2: -Studies have shown that there are two pathways through which the amygdala’s fear responses can be triggered: a fast “low road” from the thalamus to the amygdala, and a slower “high road” that passes from the thalamus to the neocortex and only then to the amygdala, said LeDoux.

Detailed explanation-3: -Information from an external stimulus reaches the amygdala in two different ways: by a short, fast, but imprecise route, directly from the thalamus; and by a long, slow, but precise route, by way of the cortex.

Detailed explanation-4: -Thus, selective damage to the amygdala extensively alters the neural processing of emotion within IT cortex, supporting the view that the amygdala is the engine that drives neural coding of emotional identity in this part of the brain.

Detailed explanation-5: -Information about an external stimulus reaches the amygdala by two ways: by a direct pathway from the thalamus and by an indirect pathway from the thalamus via the cortex to the amygdala. The direct pathway is shorter and faster, but therefore provides only a crude representation of the stimulus.