As a depression patient, that's more or less healed, here's my take:
- In depression you can get up lost in these cognitive negative loops
- One of the feedback loops is between what you feel and what you think - a bad feeling induces you to think some bad thoughts, and as those thoughts are combined with the bad feeling, they are validated as true. Now the thought is associated with a bad feeling, and one will give rise to the other , just like tinkle of the bell induced pavlov's dog to drool. But in this case the drooling of the dog can also make the bell tinkle, causing more drooling...
- the amygdala response is about the bad feelings, and how the bad feelings can induce more physiological discomfort due to amygdala kicking in and doing "what it's supposed to" - now your bad feelings are superchardged as well
- so, I would say it's not only about cortex or amygdala, but in depression the negative thought patterns and the physiological response can get linked into this destructive loop of continuous feedback. Hence, it does not matter that you can rationally say to yourself the bad thoughts you had are not that serious because they just launched a full scale amygdala based storm of bad feeling and anxiety
- my ssri:s kind of felt like they cut out this bad loop. I felt like my cognitive self was insulated from the physiological response, giving me space to unlearn both cognitive and emotional bad habits one at a time without the disruptive loop taking control
- One of the feedback loops is between what you feel and what you think - a bad feeling induces you to think some bad thoughts, and as those thoughts are combined with the bad feeling, they are validated as true. Now the thought is associated with a bad feeling, and one will give rise to the other , just like tinkle of the bell induced pavlov's dog to drool. But in this case the drooling of the dog can also make the bell tinkle, causing more drooling...
- the amygdala response is about the bad feelings, and how the bad feelings can induce more physiological discomfort due to amygdala kicking in and doing "what it's supposed to" - now your bad feelings are superchardged as well
- so, I would say it's not only about cortex or amygdala, but in depression the negative thought patterns and the physiological response can get linked into this destructive loop of continuous feedback. Hence, it does not matter that you can rationally say to yourself the bad thoughts you had are not that serious because they just launched a full scale amygdala based storm of bad feeling and anxiety
- my ssri:s kind of felt like they cut out this bad loop. I felt like my cognitive self was insulated from the physiological response, giving me space to unlearn both cognitive and emotional bad habits one at a time without the disruptive loop taking control