The amygdala is a prominent brain region known for its involvement in learning and memory in emotional situations including during fear, anxiety, and pleasure - including its activation in the fight or flight response. However, this psychology related research has taken place almost exclusively in laboratory environments with limited ability to generalize to natural settings that rodents would be instinctually prepared to learn in.

How the amygdala processes this information in more natural environments has not been explored. In Episode #3 of First-Person Science, PhD Candidate Peter Zambetti from the University of Washington speaks on his recently published manuscript in iScience. Using instinctual fear stimuli (a 3D owl) rather than the classic foot-shock, Dr. Zambetti aims to better understand innate defensive behaviors. "S*ex Differences in Foraging Rats to Naturalistic Aerial Predator Stimuli", published in iScience from CellPress