'Almost every study of fear finds that the amygdala is active. But that doesn't mean every spark of activity in the amygdala means the person is afraid. Instead, the amygdala seems to be doing something more subtle: processing events that are related to what a person cares about at the moment. So if you're in a scary situation or have an anxious personality, the amygdala might be activated by a frightening image. But hungry people have increased amygdala activity in response to pictures of food and people who are very empathetic have an amygdala response to seeing other people. "When we're studying emotion, people want to find specific brain parts that are associated with different emotions," Cunningham says. Especially in the early days of neuroscience, scientists hoped that soon it would be possible to use MRI and other brain-imaging techniques "to get under the hood and find out what people are really thinking." A lot of the time, people really don't know, or won't say, what... - Adam Crowe