Debra Onsager

“Autonoetic consciousness is our best friend and worst enemy. It enables us to write and revise our narrative, our self-story, as we live each moment of each day.”
― Joseph LeDoux, Anxious

“It was as if the amygdala was the accelerator of defensive reactions and the prefrontal cortex the brake upon them (Figure 11.1). Malfunction of the brake makes the expression of the reactions hard to control. This idea has since been supported by research in animals and humans and is now commonly accepted.10”
― Joseph LeDoux, Anxious

“Stress can also prevent extinction from taking place.53 This is thought to be due to the fact that stressful events release the hormone cortisol via the pituitary-adrenal system (see Chapter 3); this hormone has impairing effects on PFCVM function.54 Thus, the very factor needed to induce extinction—exposure to stressful threats—can prevent extinction. This is an argument against the use of flooding and related exposure procedures that elicit high levels of “fear.” However, the hormones released during stress that impair extinction have complex and sometimes opposing effects on different phases of learning (acquisition, memory consolidation, memory retrieval, extinction, and memory reconsolidation).”
― Joseph LeDoux, Anxious

“In real brains neural networks do not exist in isolation. They communicate with other networks by way of synaptic transmission. For example, in order to see an apple, instead of a roundish, reddish blob, the various features of the stimulus, each processed by different visual subsystems, have to be integrated. As we saw in Chapter 7, the problem of understanding the manner in which this occurs is called the binding problem. One popular solution to this problem is based on the notion of neuronal synchrony. Synchronous (simultaneous) firing, and thus binding, has been proposed as an explanation of consciousness (chap. 7), but our interest here is more in the ability of synchronous firing between cells in different interconnected regions to coordinate plasticity across the regions.”
― Joseph LeDoux