Neurons in the human amygdala encode face identity, but not gaze direction
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The amygdala is important for face processing, and direction of eye gaze is one of the most socially salient facial signals. Recording from over 200 neurons in the amygdala of neurosurgical patients, we found robust encoding of the identity of neutral-expression faces, but not of their direction of gaze. Processing of gaze direction may rely on a predominantly cortical network rather than the amygdala.
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The effect found in discrimination of both negative and positive states supports evidence of a generalized role of OXT in modulating CeA function in response to socially communicated salient information.
“The effect we found in the discrimination of both negative and positive states, however, supports the evidence of a generalized role of OXT in modulating CeA function in the response to socially communicated salient information, similar to evidence in humans [70,90,92,106,107].”
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Oxytocin Signaling in the Central Amygdala Modulates Emotion Discrimination in Mice
Ferretti, V., Maltese, F., Contarini, G., Nigro, M., Bonavia, A., Huang, H., Gigliucci, V., Morelli, G., Scheggia, D., Managò, F., et al. (2019) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.04.070 · Cited by 212 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mormann, F., Niediek, J., Tudusciuc, O., Quesada, C. M., Coenen, V. A., Elger, C. E., & Adolphs, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Bonn (DE)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mormann, Florian
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2015-10-19
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1568-1570
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- PMC
- PMC4624486
- OpenAlex
- W1944652955
- Cited by
- 49
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 6
- FWCI
- 3.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- FreiDok plus (Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (P50MH094258)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Face recognition and analysis
- Keywords
- amygdala, face identity, gaze direction, single-unit recording, face processing, gaze, neural coding, neurosurgical patients
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Amygdala, Emotions, Face, Facial Expression, Female, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Neurons, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Photic Stimulation, Young Adult
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