By studying animals, scientists have shown that the fear hormone is made in a part of the brain called the amygdala.
In adolescents, the cortex is small, so they use the amygdala much more.
When the danger that causes the feeling of fear disappears, the memory of that danger is kept for some time in the amygdala.
Unfortunately this cannot account for the differences observed between appetitive and aversive tasks in non-primate species following amygdala damage.
Partial correlation coefficients controlling for total brain volume were used to examine the relationship between amygdala and hippocampal volumes and demographic, cognitive and clinical variables.
