The 28 brain regions, and how to train them

Amygdala

Threat detection; the center of fear, anxiety, and fast emotional reactions.

Anterior cingulate cortex

Managing internal conflict, attention, and error detection; the dorsal ACC also tracks social pain.

Insula

Interoception and self-awareness; the anterior insula turns bodily signals into felt emotion, disgust, and empathy for pain.

Bed nucleus of the stria terminalis

Part of the extended amygdala; drives sustained, diffuse anxiety and anticipatory apprehension, as opposed to the amygdala's fast, cue-locked fear.

Periaqueductal gray

Coordinates innate defensive responses — freeze, fight-or-flight — and gates pain through descending analgesia.

Subgenual cingulate cortex

A hub of sadness and rumination; overactive in depression and a target of deep-brain stimulation research.

Prefrontal cortex

Reasoning, planning, decision-making, impulse control, discipline.

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Working memory, cognitive reappraisal, and top-down inhibition — the deliberate brake on impulse and emotion.

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Assigns subjective value and signals safety to the amygdala, extinguishing fear once danger has passed.

Orbitofrontal cortex

Represents the value of rewards and punishments and updates it when contingencies change, supporting behavioral flexibility.

Medial prefrontal cortex

Self-referential processing and thinking about others' minds; anchors the sense of self within the default-mode network.

Nucleus accumbens

Reward circuit, strongly tied to dopamine, motivation, pleasure, and addictions.

Ventral tegmental area

Origin of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway; codes reward-prediction error and fuels motivation and learning.

Dorsal striatum

Habit formation and action selection; turns repeated reward-linked actions into automatic routines.

Ventral pallidum

A hedonic hotspot and key output of the reward circuit that amplifies both 'liking' and 'wanting'.

Hippocampus

Memory and learning.

Hypothalamus

Regulation of hunger, sleep, hormones, and stress.

Locus coeruleus

The brain's main noradrenaline source; sets arousal, vigilance, and the acute stress response.

Mammillary bodies

A relay in the Papez circuit and extended hippocampal system, supporting recollective and spatial memory.

Septal nuclei

Social reward and fear regulation; works with the hippocampus to dampen anxiety and support affiliation.

Lateral habenula

The brain's 'anti-reward' hub: it fires to disappointment and suppresses dopamine, driving avoidance and low mood when overactive.

Temporoparietal junction

Theory of mind — attributing beliefs and intentions to others — plus self/other distinction and perspective-taking.

Temporal pole

Binds social and emotional concepts — the semantics of people, scripts, and emotional knowledge.

Superior temporal sulcus

Reads biological motion and social cues — gaze, expression, gesture — to infer intention from movement.

Fusiform face area

Specialized for face recognition — rapid reading of identity and expression.

Precuneus

A core default-mode hub for self-referential thought, autobiographical memory, and perspective; overactive during rumination.

Thalamus

The central sensory relay; routes signals to cortex and, via a fast 'low road', straight to the amygdala for rapid threat response.

Cerebellum

Beyond movement, the cerebellum (especially the vermis) tunes and predicts emotional and cognitive responses, smoothing affect regulation.