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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The amygdala theory of autism.
Simon Baron-Cohen,Howard Ring,Edward T. Bullmore,Sally Wheelwright,Chris Ashwin,Steven Williams +5 more
TL;DR: Patients with autism or AS did not activate the amygdala when making mentalistic inferences from the eyes, whilst people without autism did show amygdala activity and the amygdala is proposed to be one of several neural regions that are abnormal in autism.
Journal ArticleDOI
Responding to the emotions of others: dissociating forms of empathy through the study of typical and psychiatric populations.
TL;DR: It is argued that individuals with autism show difficulties with cognitive and motor empathy but less clear difficulties with respect to emotional empathy, while individuals with psychopathy showclear difficulties with a specific form of emotional empathy but no indications of impairment with cognitive or motor empathy.
Journal ArticleDOI
Distributed and interactive brain mechanisms during emotion face perception: Evidence from functional neuroimaging
TL;DR: Hemodynamic and electrical neuroimaging results indicating that activity in the face-selective fusiform cortex may be enhanced by emotional (fearful) expressions, without explicit voluntary control, and presumably through direct feedback connections from the amygdala are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Anxiety and affective style : role of prefrontal cortex and amygdala
TL;DR: This article reviews the modern literature on two key aspects of the central circuitry of emotion: the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the amygdala, and places emphasis on affective chronometry, or the time course of emotional responding, as a key attribute of individual differences in propensity for anxiety that is regulated by this circuitry.
Journal ArticleDOI
The human amygdala and the emotional evaluation of sensory stimuli.
TL;DR: Specific conclusions and hypotheses include that the amygdala activates during exposure to aversive stimuli from multiple sensory modalities, and activation of the amygdala is associated with modulation of motor readiness, autonomic functions, and cognitive processes including attention and memory.
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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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Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala.
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.