A differential neural response in the human amygdala to fearful and happy facial expressions
J. S. Morris,Chris D. Frith,David I. Perrett,Duncan Rowland,Andrew W. Young,Andrew J. Calder,Raymond J. Dolan +6 more
TLDR
Direct in vivo evidence of a differential neural response in the human amygdala to facial expressions of fear and happiness is reported, providing direct evidence that the humangdala is engaged in processing the emotional salience of faces, with a specificity of response to fearful facial expressions.Abstract:
The amygdala is thought to play a crucial role in emotional and social behaviour. Animal studies implicate the amygdala in both fear conditioning and face perception. In humans, lesions of the amygdala can lead to selective deficits in the recognition of fearful facial expressions and impaired fear conditioning, and direct electrical stimulation evokes fearful emotional responses. Here we report direct in vivo evidence of a differential neural response in the human amygdala to facial expressions of fear and happiness. Positron-emission tomography (PET) measures of neural activity were acquired while subjects viewed photographs of fearful or happy faces, varying systematically in emotional intensity. The neuronal response in the left amygdala was significantly greater to fearful as opposed to happy expressions. Furthermore, this response showed a significant interaction with the intensity of emotion (increasing with increasing fearfulness, decreasing with increasing happiness). The findings provide direct evidence that the human amygdala is engaged in processing the emotional salience of faces, with a specificity of response to fearful facial expressions.read more
Citations
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Beauty in a smile: The role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness
John P. O'Doherty,Joel S. Winston,Hugo D. Critchley,David I. Perrett,D. M. Burt,Raymond J. Dolan +5 more
TL;DR: Brain regions that respond to attractive faces which manifested either a neutral or mildly happy face expression were investigated, suggesting that the reward value of an attractive face as indexed by medial OFC activity is modulated by a perceiver directed smile.
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Social cognition and the human brain
TL;DR: This work focuses on the amygdala, ventromedial frontal cortices, and right somatosensory-related cortex, which appear to mediate between perceptual representations of socially relevant stimuli and retrieval of knowledge.
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Neuroanatomical Hypothesis of Panic Disorder, Revised
TL;DR: Medications, particularly those that influence the serotonin system, are hypothesized to desensitize the fear network from the level of the amygdala through its projects to the hypothalamus and the brainstem, and effective psychosocial treatments may also reduce contextual fear and cognitive misattributions.
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Affective style, psychopathology, and resilience: brain mechanisms and plasticity.
TL;DR: Individual differences in this circuitry are reviewed, with an emphasis on asymmetries within the PFC and activation of the amygdala as 2 key components of affective style.
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From normal fear to pathological anxiety
Jeffrey B. Rosen,Jay Schulkin +1 more
TL;DR: How pathological anxiety may develop from adaptive fear states is addressed, and hyperexcitability of fear circuits that include the amygdala and extended amygdala is expressed as hypervigilance and increased behavioral responsivity to fearful stimuli.
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Karl J. Friston,John Ashburner,Chris D. Frith,Jean-Baptiste Poline,Jon D. Heather,Richard S. J. Frackowiak +5 more
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Ralph Adolphs,Daniel Tranel,Hanna Damasio,Hanna Damasio,Antonio R. Damasio,Antonio R. Damasio +5 more
TL;DR: Findings suggest the human amygdala may be indispensable to recognize fear in facial expressions, but is not required to recognize personal identity from faces, and constrains the broad notion that the amygdala is involved in emotion.