Joseph LeDoux helped make the amygdala famous – his seminal studies of fear conditioning illuminated, among other things, the importance of unconscious processing – so it’s only fitting that he would be part of a rock band called The Amygdaloids.

Imagine Jefferson Airplane, with perhaps a dash of the Eagles and a lot of a neuroscientific puns, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what The Amygdaloids sound like. “All in a Nut,” for example, begins with a slightly psychedelic guitar solo and a plaintive question: “Why do we feel so afraid?/Don’t have to look very far/Don’t get stuck in a rut/It’s all in a nut/In your brain.” (The amygdala looks like an almond, and its name is derived from the Greek word for almond.)

Other signature tracks include “Memory Pill,” “A Trace,” and, my personal favorite, “Mind Body Problem”. You can preview them all here. If I were a high school biology teacher, I’d make sure all my students had these tracks on their iPod.

To learn more about The Amygdaloids, check out their homepage, or watch this video, or buy their new CD.