The human amygdala is involved in general behavioral relevance detection: Evidence from an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging Go-NoGo task

“Small volume corrections for multiple comparisons were applied for our regions of interest (ROIs) (bilateral amygdala) based on anatomically defined ROIs using the SPM Anatomy toolbox developed by Eickhoff et al. (2005).”

“…has efferent connections with cortical and subcortical areas engaged in attentional and motivational processes (Holland and Gallagher, 1999; Davis and Whalen, 2001), allowing it to mediate vigilance and redirect attention as a function of shifting behavioral relevance of environmental…”

“The images were spatially normalized (Friston et al., 1995), resampled at 2×2×2 mm and smoothed using a 6 mm full width-half maximum (FWHM) isotropic kernel.”

“…fax: +47-23-02-73-33. o.a.andreassen@medisin.uio.no (O. A. Andreassen).. -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript recognizing fearful facial expressions (Adolphs et al., 1994), and tended to judge unknown individuals as more trustworthy and approachable (Adolphs et al., 1998).”

“During the past several years the classical view of the amygdala as a threat detector/fear-module has been expanded following multiple reports linking the amygdala to non-fearful emotional facial expressions including happiness (Breiter et al., 1996; Morris et al., 1996; Canli et al., 2002), sadness (Blair et al.”

“During the past several years the classical view of the amygdala as a threat detector/fear-module has been expanded following multiple reports linking the amygdala to non-fearful emotional facial expressions including happiness (Breiter et al., 1996; Morris et al., 1996; Canli et al., 2002), sadness (Blair et al.”

“Several research groups have shown that the amygdala contributes to acquisition and expression of conditioned fear responses, both in animals (LeDoux, 2000) and humans (LaBar et al., 1998).”

“, 2002), sadness (Blair et al., 1999), contempt (Sambataro et al.”

“This has been demonstrated both to biological needs such as food and state of satiety (O'Doherty et al., 2001; Gottfried et al., 2003) as well as in social perspectives.”

“…fax: +47-23-02-73-33. o.a.andreassen@medisin.uio.no (O. A. Andreassen).. -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript recognizing fearful facial expressions (Adolphs et al., 1994), and tended to judge unknown individuals as more trustworthy and approachable (Adolphs et al., 1998).”

“Moreover, it has been suggested that the amygdala is capable of processing emotionally salient stimuli outside awareness, probably through a subcortical retino-collicular-pulvinar pathway for the visual domain (Vuilleumier et al., 2003).”

“Further, stimuli that are experienced as arousing or motivating can elicit amygdala responses (Zald, 2003).”

“Both of these areas have previously been linked to motor response inhibition, which is the case for the number stimuli (Rubia et al., 2001).”

“…relevant stimuli without explicit emotional valence like novel, neutral faces (Schwartz et al., 2003a,b; Wright and Liu, 2006), untrustworthy faces (Winston et al., 2002; Engell et al., 2007), facial attractiveness (Winston et al., 2007) and eyegaze (Adams et al., 2003) as well as unpredictable…”

“According to Sander et al. (2003), “an event is relevant for an organism if it can significantly influence (positively or negatively) the attainment of his or her goals, or the maintenance of his or her own well-being.””

“This has been demonstrated both to biological needs such as food and state of satiety (O'Doherty et al., 2001; Gottfried et al., 2003) as well as in social perspectives.”

“Further, the amygdala has efferent connections with cortical and subcortical areas engaged in attentional and motivational processes (Holland and Gallagher, 1999; Davis and Whalen, 2001), allowing it to mediate vigilance and redirect attention as a function of shifting behavioral relevance of…”

“This pre-awareness processing may serve to preferentially guide attention to behaviorally relevant events (Merikle et al., 2001), even when incidental to current cognitive demands.”

“During the past several years the classical view of the amygdala as a threat detector/fear-module has been expanded following multiple reports linking the amygdala to non-fearful emotional facial expressions including happiness (Breiter et al., 1996; Morris et al., 1996; Canli et al., 2002), sadness (Blair et al.”

“Amygdala lesions may lead to similar deficits in identifying threat (Adolphs et al., 1994) and processing reward in humans (Bechara et al., 2003).”

“…explicit emotional valence like novel, neutral faces (Schwartz et al., 2003a,b; Wright and Liu, 2006), untrustworthy faces (Winston et al., 2002; Engell et al., 2007), facial attractiveness (Winston et al., 2007) and eyegaze (Adams et al., 2003) as well as unpredictable auditory stimuli elicit…”

“Most sensory modalities project to the amygdala (Price, 2003), and hence the amygdala receives information about both external stimuli and internal bodily states.”

“…has been expanded following multiple reports linking the amygdala to non-fearful emotional facial expressions including happiness (Breiter et al., 1996; Morris et al., 1996; Canli et al., 2002), sadness (Blair et al., 1999), contempt (Sambataro et al., 2006) and anger (Fitzgerald et al., 2006).”

“, 2003) as well as unpredictable auditory stimuli elicit amygdala responses (Herry et al., 2007).”

“, 2007), facial attractiveness (Winston et al., 2007) and eyegaze (Adams et al.”

“Further, patients with amygdala lesions showed blunted emotional responses during fear conditioning (Buchel and Dolan, 2000), a phenomenon also noted in Alzheimer's patients who have amygdala atrophy (Hamann et al., 2002).”

“Macaques with amygdala lesions exhibit decreased fear of predators and diminished stress in novel social situations (Amaral, 2002; Emery et al., 2001), observations initially interpreted as supporting a unique role of the amygdala as danger/threat detector (Amaral, 2002).”

“(2008) found that rising sound intensity (signaling relevance) facilitated the autonomic orienting reflex and phasic alertness to auditory targets, responses believed to be mediated through the amygdala (Williams et al., 2001).”

“Macaques with amygdala lesions exhibit decreased fear of predators and diminished stress in novel social situations (Amaral, 2002; Emery et al., 2001), observations initially interpreted as supporting a unique role of the amygdala as danger/threat detector (Amaral, 2002).”

“Also, socially relevant stimuli without explicit emotional valence like novel, neutral faces (Schwartz et al., 2003a,b; Wright and Liu, 2006), untrustworthy faces (Winston et al., 2002; Engell et al., 2007), facial attractiveness (Winston et al., 2007) and eyegaze (Adams et al., 2003) as well as…”

“Goldstein et al. (2007) created relevant stimuli using goalrelevance manipulation in an emotional linguistic Go/NoGo task.”

“Amygdala has been shown to respond to target stimuli in auditory oddball paradigm (Kiehl and Liddle, 2001), still one cannot be certain that this response is due to the behavioral relevance of the targets or the motor response to these per se, as the other stimuli often do not require button…”

“, 2003) and rising sound intensity (Bach et al., 2008).”

“Further, patients with amygdala lesions showed blunted emotional responses during fear conditioning (Buchel and Dolan, 2000), a phenomenon also noted in Alzheimer's patients who have amygdala atrophy (Hamann et al., 2002).”

“After discovering that such lesions also impair food devaluation, the amygdala’s role was extended to reward-related processes ( Izquierdo and Murray, 2007 ).”

“Our current results are consistent with those recently reported by Schaefer et al. (2006) , who demonstrated that individual differences in response speed during a three-back working memory task with non-emotional stimuli was correlated with magnitude of amygdala activity.”

“According to Schirmer et al. (2008), social orientation correlated with amygdala activity elicited by emotional vocalization, so that subjects interested in social exchange had significantly larger amygdala responses to emotional vocalization than those less interested.”

“Also, socially relevant stimuli without explicit emotional valence like novel, neutral faces (Schwartz et al., 2003a,b; Wright and Liu, 2006), untrustworthy faces (Winston et al., 2002; Engell et al., 2007), facial attractiveness (Winston et al., 2007) and eyegaze (Adams et al., 2003) as well as…”

“…has been expanded following multiple reports linking the amygdala to non-fearful emotional facial expressions including happiness (Breiter et al., 1996; Morris et al., 1996; Canli et al., 2002), sadness (Blair et al., 1999), contempt (Sambataro et al., 2006) and anger (Fitzgerald et al., 2006).”

“those not requiring responses) is further supported by findings of greater amygdala activity to “oddball” target stimuli (Kiehl and Liddle, 2001) as well as to Go events in an emotionally neutral GoNoGo task (Laurens et al., 2005).”

“Fourth, a central challenge will be to determine whether increased MCC control signals are a consequence of amplified punishment-related information arriving from distal brain regions, such as the extended amygdala (Brázdil et al., 2002; Nishijo et al., 2008; Ousdal et al., 2008), or instead reflect local changes in t…”

“Newer evidence, however, extended this concept to the extraction of biological significance from the environment [Sander et al., 2003] and the consequent shaping of behavioral responses [Ousdal et al., 2008].”