The Human Amygdala: An Evolved System for Relevance Detection

“…of emotion, Sander and colleagues have argued that the computational profile of the amygdala is best characterized as default detection of stimuli appraised as relevant, given the individual’s current concerns, such as goals, needs, and values (Sander et al. 2003; see also, Sander, in press).”

“Finally, a recent model postulates that the human amygdala acts as a ‘‘relevance detector,’’ involved in the processing of biologically relevant stimuli, regardless of their valence (Sander et al., 2003).”

“Both the lateral OFC and amygdala are involved in evaluating exteroceptive sensations (Cunningham et al., 2008; Gottfried et al., 2003; Sander et al., 2003).”

“Appraisal theorists have generally used profile matching or regression analysis (see review in Scherer, 1999a) to model the integration of the appraisal results, without treating the issue in much detail. Scherer (2004) has suggested using Anderson (1989) integration functions, expected to be strongly determined by th…”

“…or other aversive pictures) and whether these effects would be generalized to other kinds of signals that are highly relevant for the organism (see Sander et al., 2003), such as ambiguous D ow nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /cercor/article-abstract/14/6/619/321696 by guest on 10 January…”

“By contrast, the amygdala provides social and emotional valence to sensory perceptions, such as the recognition of fearful stimuli, providing input on emotional content to brain structures such as the hippocampus and neocortex (Adolphs et al. 2002; Sander et al. 2003; Skuse et al. 2003).”

“Recent accounts on amygdala function have focused on a more general role of this structure in identifying salient stimuli in the environment instead of specifically processing aversive information (30, 31).”

“emotions (Sander et al. 2003).”

“The amygdala facilitates attention toward emotionally significant, or relevant, stimuli (Whalen, 1998; Sander et al., 2003; Vuilleumier, 2005; Whalen and Phelps, 2009).”

“…and positive emotions (Costafreda et al., 2008, Murray, 2007), and is involved in relevance detection in the brain, i.e. responding to stimulus features relevant for the subject’s interests (e.g. survival), and prioritizing processing in other brain areas (Jacobs et al., 2012,Sander et al., 2003).”

“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].”

“…rapidly detects the stimulus’ relevance and enhances the cortical perceptual representation of the relevant stimulus that becomes more salient and likely to bias attention (Brosch et al., 2008; Brosch, Sander, & Scherer, 2007; Brosch, Scherer, Grandjean, & Sander, 2013; Sander et al., 2003).”

“The link between fear and uncertainty is emphasized by theorists who posit that the amygdala is also engaged during conditions of uncertainty about biologically relevant stimuli that warrant vigilance (Sander et al., 2003; Whalen et al., 1998).”

“2000; Phelps & LeDoux 2005), and perhaps other socialaffective appraisal processes (Sander et al. 2003; Rosen & Donley 2006).”

“Future research will have to more precisely determine which specific role it fulfils in this process and also how it interacts with other appraisal areas such as the amygdala (presumably relevant for initial coarse and potentially non-conscious appraisals; Sander et al., 2003) and the lateral PFC (who may subserve mor…”

“Due to the variety of stimuli that engage this region, the amygdala has been proposed to play a broader role in detecting salient stimuli [5,6] and in eliciting central and autonomic arousal [7,8], of which fear is a particularly potent example.”

“These findings are consistent with the notion that the amygdala may play a critical role in relevance detection (Sander et al., 2003), allowing efficient orienting of processing resources towards salient events.”

“The amygdala is involved in multiple psychological functions (Phelps & LeDoux 2005) from learning of fear responses and consolidation of emotional memories (McGaugh 2004) to implicit evaluation of stimuli (Davis & Whalen 2001; Sander et al. 2003; Vuilleumier 2005; Whalen 1998).”

“On the basis of our demonstration that positive biologically significant stimuli are prioritized by the attention system, further research should examine whether the same neural system is involved in the orienting of attention toward biologically relevant stimuli (Sander, Grafman, & Zalla, 2003).”

“We speculate that its involvement in processing CT-targeted touch may represent a signaling of biological relevance (Sander et al., 2003) or reward and motivation as this region has been implicated in tracking the identity and the social value of conspecifics (Gothard et al.”

“The amygdala, comprised of several nuclei with different functional roles, is sensitive to stimuli indicating threat, such as fearful faces (45, 46), and more generally serves as a salience detector (47, 48).”

“…(often suggested as the location of a fear module; Calder, Lawrence, & Young, 2001; O¨hman & Mineka, 2001) is strongly involved in the general processing of relevance, including relevance of positive stimulation (Fitzgerald, Angstadt, Jelsone, Nathan, & Phan, 2006; Sander, Grafman, & Zalla, 2003).”

“…metaanalysis, Bohrn et al. (2012a) also found a significant activation of the left amygdala for (foregrounded) figurative as compared to literal language which can be taken as a sign for higher emotional relevance (Sander et al., 2003) and/or affective intensity (Phan et al., 2004) of the former.”

“The amygdala interacts with an extended network of cortical and subcortical areas to ascribe emotional salience to events, coordinate adaptive behavioral responses to such events, and modulate the perception, attention, and memory toward emotionally-valenced stimuli [24,25].”

“…and the VMPFC—and the amygdala are critically involved in emotional processing, but the specific levels of processing and types of computations that are performed in these regions are not clearly understood (Davidson & Irwin, 1999; Koenigs et al., 2007; Rolls, 1999; Sander, Grafman, & Zalla, 2003).”

“, 2007) and that the function of the amygdala could be more accurately described as a ‘relevance detector’ (Sander et al., 2003).”

“Although the study referred to did not directly probe possible associated (positive) affect, it is well established that the amygdala intervenes in reward processing just as well as in fear processing (Baxter and Murray 2002; Sander et al 2003).”

“Previous neuroimaging studies concerning attachment have focused on particular relationships such as maternal and romantic love, without considering individual attachment style [19,20], and reported that pictures of loved individuals deactivate the amygdala and activate the striatum, two brain regions critical for aff…”

“…et al., 1999; Whalen et al., 2005; Winston, O’Doherty, & Dolan, 2003) and (2) the amygdala was proposed to be critical for relevance detection (Sander et al., 2003), then it can be suggested that the amygdala is essential for establishing the emotional significance elicited by the…”

“Given recent theories that the amygdala responds to motivationally relevant stimuli (Norris et al., 2004; Cunningham et al., 2008; Sander et al., 2003) and ERP findings supporting the implicit processing of negativity (Ito and Cacioppo, 2000), this pattern of findings suggests that negative Please…”

“The amygdala and associated circuits are clearly implicated in the fear response (Phelps & LeDoux 2005), but there is also substantive evidence that the amygdala reacts in a more general way to novelty, incongruity and general relevance (Sander et al. 2003).”

“Some of the functions identified indicate that this group of regions is important for the processing of biologically relevant information from the environment (Sander et al. 2003; Sergerie et al. 2008).”

“The amygdala, through reciprocal connection with the pSTS, underlies rapid and prioritized processing of emotion signals (Sander et al. 2003).”

“These findings are consistent with proposed models of amygdala function which emphasize its role in the detection of biologically relevant stimuli in the environment, regardless of their modality (e.g., Armony and Ledoux, 2000; Glascher and Adolphs, 2003; Sander et al., 2003).”

“2013), but this often can be unpacked as goal relevance, threat value, negativity, valence, or arousal (Sander et al. 2003).”

“…(McGaugh, 2004), accessing motivational or affective value of stimuli (Cardinal et al., 2002) and coding the biological relevance of stimuli to guide behavior and cognition via sensitivity to the motivational, emotional and social meaning of stimuli (Adolphs 2003, 2010; Sander et al., 2003).”

“The amygdala has also been conceived of as a “system for relevance detection” [248].”

“[5] Prominent in most brain models of gSAD is the amygdala,[6] which plays a key role in fear responses,[7] social information processing,[8] and the perception of salient emotional stimuli.[9] Evidence of a link between amygdala hyperactivity and symptom severity suggests it is a core deficit in the pathophysiology o…”

“The challenge of unraveling the function of the human amygdala is attracting great interest [1–5].”

“We predicted that the amygdala should show selective modulations depending on eye gaze direction, with angry faces producing greater responses with a direct than averted gaze, but fearful faces conversely producing greater responses with averted than direct gaze (Sander et al., 2003).”

“…2011), and attention is primarily attracted by salient (or alerting) stimuli, several studies emphasise the role of the amygdala in the detection and evaluation of stimuli that are motivationally significant for behaviour (Sander et al., 2003; Herbert et al., 2009; Cunningham and Kirkland, 2013).”

“2006), relevance (Sander et al. 2003), and ambiguity (Whalen 1998; Rosen and Donley 2006).”

“Recent developments within the study of emotional processing, however, have suggested that rather than being a fear “module”, these pathways may constitute a more general system for relevance detection (Herbert et al., 2009; Paton et al., 2006; Sander et al., 2003; Sergerie et al., 2008) monitoring both positive and n…”

“Domain-specificity, simulation, and enactive social cognition”

“The amygdala is a structure critically implicated in emotional processing and learning (see Phelps and LeDoux, 2005 for a review), with a particular importance for fear (Ohman and Mineka, 2001) and, more generally, for the appraisal of self-relevant stimuli (Sander et al., 2003).”

“Gender discrimination/stereotyping tasks may be some of the functions of the amygdala, which in general include providing a quick, unconscious, affect- [Cunningham et al., 2003] and relevance-based [Sander et al., 2003] evaluation of the environment that prepares one for immediate action.”

“…December 2014 | Volume 5 | Article 1351 | 1 cues and has been documented to operate independently from the sensory modality which conveyed the information (Armony and LeDoux, 2000; Sander et al., 2003; Zald, 2003; Öhman, 2005; Stekelenburg and Vroomen, 2007; Scharpf et al., 2010; Armony, 2013).”

“Human studies suggest that the amygdala is not restricted to the processing of emotional or fear-related stimuli, but that it has a broader role in the detection of relevant stimuli (Sander et al., 2003), which might be important during the music-learning process.”

“…about the amygdala in this regard, an area that is often referred to as supporting a discrete theory of fear because it has repeatedly been shown to be involved in threat responses in rats and humans (see e.g., LeDoux, 1996; Öhman and Mineka, 2001; for critical discussion see Sander et al., 2003).”

“…role of the amygdala in the detection of emotionally salient external stimuli (Anderson and Phelps, 2000; LaBar et al., 1998; Phelps, 2006; Sander et al., 2003; Vuilleumier, 2005; Whalen et al., 2001), this structure could be similarly involved in the rapid affective monitoring of…”

“It 5 alerts us in principle towards both hostile and pleasurable stimuli but takes into account internal milieu states as well as current environmental and individual demands (Sander et al., 2003).”