““Instead, these findings suggest that the amygdala injects implicit distrust and vigilance into social decision making.23 All thanks to learning. In the words of the authors of the study, “The generosity in the trust game of our BLA-damaged subjects might be considered pathological altruism, in the sense that inborn altruistic behaviors have not, due to BLA damage, been un-learned through negative social experience.” In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.””
