Amygdala hijack

Every half's amygdala is made up of a small, round structures located closer to the forehead than (anterior to) the hippocampus, near the temporal lobes.

The amygdalae are involved in detecting and learning which parts of our surroundings are important and have emotional significance.

[7] Goleman later emphasized that "self-control is crucial ... when facing someone who is in the throes of an amygdala hijack"[8] so as to avoid a complementary hijacking—whether in work situations, or in private life.

Thus for example "one key marital competence is for partners to learn to soothe their own distressed feelings ... nothing gets resolved positively when husband or wife is in the midst of an emotional hijacking".

[9] The danger is that "when our partner becomes, in effect, our enemy, we are in the grip of an 'amygdala hijack' in which our emotional memory, lodged in the limbic center of our brain, rules our reactions without the benefit of logic or reason ... which causes our bodies to go into a 'fight or flight' response.

"[12] Joseph E. LeDoux was positive about the possibility of learning to control the amygdala's hair-trigger role in emotional outbursts.