Positive and negative emotional verbal stimuli elicit activity in the left amygdala
Abstract
The human amygdala's involvement in negative emotion is well established, but relatively little is known regarding its role in positive emotion. Here we examined the neural response to emotionally positive, negative, and neutral words using fMRI. Relative to neutral words, positive and negative emotional words elicited greater activity in the left amygdala. Positive but not negative words elicited activity in dorsal and ventral striatal regions which have been linked in previous neuroimaging studies to reward and positive affect, including caudate, putamen, globus pallidus, and accumbens. These findings provide the first direct evidence that the amygdala is involved in emotional reactions elicited by both positive and negative emotional words, and further indicate that positive words additionally activate brain regions related to reward.
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The amygdala is thought to reflect the encoding and generation of responses to negatively and positively arousing cues.
“This is because the amygdala is thought to reflect the encoding and generation of responses to negatively and positively arousing cues (Anderson et al., 2003; Garavan, Pendergrass, Ross, Stein, & Risinger, 2001; Hamann & Mao, 2002).”
From Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal (2008) · cites this paper as Hamann & Mao, 2002
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- Authors
- Hamann, S., & Mao, H.
- Affiliations
- Emory University (US)
- Venue
- Neuroreport
- Published
- 2002-01
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 15-19
- ISSN
- 0959-4965 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2087889245
- Cited by
- 385
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 24 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 8.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Neuroreport (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Keywords
- amygdala, positive emotions, negative emotions, emotional words, reward processing, striatum, caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus, nucleus accumbens, emotional valence
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Amygdala, Behavior, Corpus Striatum, Dominance, Cerebral, Emotions, Humans, Language, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Reading, Prefrontal Cortex
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