The Human Amygdala: An Evolved System for Relevance Detection

“Thus, the BLA may be viewed as the sensory amygdala, continuously involved in salience detection (Anderson and Phelps, 2001; Sander et al., 2003).”

“…also reported amygdala involvement in reward processing (e.g., Ambroggi, Ishikawa, Fields, & Nicola, 2008; Holland & Gallagher, 2004; Murray, 2007; Sander et al., 2003), suggesting that the amygdala plays an important role in using emotional reactions to learn both positive and negative…”

“This finding, and others [54,55,56], supports alternative theoretical views of amygdala function, in which this regions is postulated to mediate general vigilance/goal-relevance-detection processes that contribute to enhanced cognitive performance as well as processing of emotional demands [57,58].”

“Alternatively, it could be that novel stimuli are more salient than repeated stimuli, and the amygdala is simply tracking this difference in salience (Sander et al., 2003).”

“…arousing stimuli (as discussed within the framework of the modulated-consolidation model, see Section 2) the work on emotion and attention also aligns well with appraisal theories of emotion, where the amygdala is thought to be involved in appraising stimuli as goal-relevant (Sander et al., 2003).”

“Finally, the amygdala is recognized as a detector of several self-relevant processes, such as fear conditioning in both animals and humans (Markram et al. 2008; Rodgers et al. 2008; Feinstein et al. 2011), or for the evaluation of the emotional content in human voices (Sander et al. 2003).”

“, 2003], suggesting that the amygdala is more generally involved in the relevance and/or emotional intensity of the stimuli, regardless of their valence [Phan et al., 2004a,b; Sander et al., 2003].”

“This null result might reflect a broader role in encoding social or self-relevant information rather than just negative valence 55 , with the amygdala already activating to the content of LE videos and therefore showing similar increases during both video conditions in Experiment 2 (Fig.”

“Likewise, the enhanced amygdala activation in response to r 2764 r musical anomalies (meter and harmony) in experts is consistent with a key role for this region in ‘‘relevance detection’’ [Ousdal et al., 2008; Sander et al., 2003].”

“Indeed, patients exhibited a significant amygdala activation associated with novelty bias for sad faces (see table 2), similar to that previously reported in healthy controls and consistent with a role of this structure in the detection of novel stimuli, particularly those with biological or emotional relevance.(47) I…”

“Because of recent reports suggesting that the amygdala has no specialized role in processing signals of threat like fear or anger but rather may have a more general-purpose function in processing salient information from faces (Fitzgerald et al., 2006; Sander et al., 2003), we included not only fearful and neutral but…”

“7 For over a century, scientists have rigorously studied the neurobiological basis of pleasantness and unpleasantness (Adolphs, 2010a; Blood et al., 1999; Lane et al., 1997; Lang and Bradley, 2007; LeDoux, 2012; LeDoux, 2000; LeDoux et al., 1984; Sander et al., 2003) using animal models (Knutson et al.”

“This pattern of findings suggests that OT may facilitate amygdalar communication with more anterior regions as a function of early orienting of attentional resources to socially relevant stimuli (Huffmeijer et al., 2013; Sander et al., 2003).”

“There is increasing evidence that, in addition to orienting attention to socially relevant stimuli in the environment (Sander et al., 2003; Zalla & Sperduti, 2013), the amygdala plays a role in the processing of affective prosody (Adolphs, 2002) and early language acquisition (Dehaene-Lambertz et al.”

“We should stress, however, that this consideration is not critical for our main results, since a lack of valence effects in the fusiform gyrus and the amygdala is plausible with respect to earlier accounts (Sander et al., 2003; Surguladze et al., 2003; Winston et al., 2003a).”

“…amygdala may be more responsible for processing negative stimuli (Amaral, 2003), emotional stimuli (Zald, 2003), phylogenetic fear stimuli (Ohman and Mineka, 2001), vigilance and ambiguity resolution (Davis and Whalen, 2001), or salient and relevance detection (Adolphs, 2010; Sander et al., 2003).”

“This picture reflects the standard function attributed to the AMG in human fMRI studies, whereby the AMG detects the valence or relevance of a stimulus [16,17].”

“with direct gaze are indeed more self-relevant as they may signal a danger of being attacked (Sander et al., 2003).”

“(2010) reported amygdala responses to errors and suggested that the amygdala might register the behavioral relevance of action outcomes in accordance with behavioral goals (Ousdal et al., 2012; Sander et al., 2003).”

“More specifically, concerning the amygdala, the literature suggests this area to play an important role in affective processing and more generally the detection of and the physiological responses to salient stimuli (Sander et al. 2003; Lim et al. 2009).”

“The AMY has been extensively studied and there is a broad consensus on the relevance of this brain structure in face processing (Adolphs, 2002), and more generally, the immediate detection of biological significance (Sander et al., 2003), or resolving uncertainty (Whalen, 1998).”

“This finding supports the notion that the right amygdala could be involved in the processing of social cues prompted by faces, a specific aspect of the more general role of the amygdala in the detection of salience [53] and relevance [54].”

“The amygdala is part of subcortical structures in the limbic system which has been shown to be particularly responsive to relevant stimuli (Sander et al., 2003), and has been extensively implicated in the pathophysiology of BPD (Ruocco and Carcone, 2016).”

“2 Test of riddles [ 96 ] Clue n°1 : My weight is about 300 g”

“Activation of the amygdala is not only a neural correlate of fear, but can be elicited by salient stimuli in general (Sander et al., 2003) and self-directedness may echo the ability of an individual to control the response to tempting stimuli such as pictures showing palatable food.”

“Furthermore, amygdala has also been suggested to be involved in salience detection (Sander et al., 2003; Kenemans and Ramsey, 2013).”

“While the amygdala historically has been implicated in fear and fear-related learning (Amaral, 2003; LeDoux, 2003), more recent work suggests that it supports more subtle functions such as distributing the stimulus emotional significance, current value, or relevance (Morrison & Salzman, 2010; Ousdal et al., 2008; Sand…”

“Based on its functional and anatomical connectivity, the amygdala is uniquely positioned to act as an integral component of a vigilance system devoted to the detection of salient environmental events that are not necessarily restricted to the emotional value of a stimulus (Whalen, 1998, 2007; Sander et al., 2003).”

“Considering the amygdala as a detector of relevance (Sander et al., 2003), the findings of this study would be consistent with the hypothesis that older adults higher in subjective well-being may find negative information less salient than positive, resulting in less connectivity within an…”

“…and following pharmacological manipulation of dopamine levels (potentially shifting IFG thresholds for SNR; Spitzer, 1997; Spitzer and Walter, 2003; Seamans and Yang, 2004; Krummenacher et al., 2010), would provide valuable directions for experimental testing of our model, and the dissociation of…”

“[42,43])—would play a role in the formation of political beliefs.”

“First, literature (Sander et al., 2003; Wager et al., 2003; Sergerie et al., 2008) suggests that the neural activity in emotion processing circuits reflects the affective rating of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures—especially the arousal dimension, and to a lesser extent…”

“4,5 The amygdala is also a key structure in the fear circuit, which mediates the expression and extinction of conditioned fear.”

“…amygdala support decisions made under a high degree of uncertainty (Adams, Gordon, Baird, Ambady, & Kleck, 2003; Herry et al., 2007; Hsu, Bhatt, Adolphs, Tranel, & Camerer, 2005) and in assessing task relevance (Davis & Whalen, 2001; Ousdal et al., 2012; Sander et al., 2003; Zhang et al., 2013).”

“The amygdala is a region commonly known for its implication in emotional processing and the evaluation of biologically relevant signals from the environment as well as for the initiation of behavioral reactions (LeDoux and Phelps, 2008; Sander et al., 2003; Pape, 2010).”

“These areas also respond to salience and relevance detection [29, 30], highlighting that brain activation patterns tend to overlap across various affective and nonaffective conditions [5], and speaking against strictly modular accounts of emotions.”

“Studies have demonstrated a strong link between amygdala activation and this attribute.(43) 44 While these results could have implications for the optimisation of HWLs, further experiments are necessary to evaluate the predictive validity of fMRI.”

“…fMRI data (such as those associated with contextual appraisals) may already provide useful insights into specific emotion components or dimensions that are most likely to be influenced by individual factors such as personal values or moral norms (Sander et al. , 2003; Cunningham and Brosch, 2012).”

“…important cue for deducing the focus of attention of an interaction partner (Langton et al., 2000; Sander et al., 2007), an angry face gazing toward the observer might seem more relevant and might trigger higher fight-or-flight-reactions than an angry face with averted gaze (Sander et al., 2003).”

“…Pessoa and Adolphs, the increase of right amygdala activation supports the suggested role of the amygdala as a convergence zone in the detection of visual stimuli with affective and social salience (Adolphs, 2010; LeDoux, 2003; Pessoa and Adolphs, 2010; Sander et al., 2003; Sergerie et al., 2006).”

“This research seems to point to a role for amygdala in an early stage of the anticipation process, before a stimulus necessarily gains incentive salience, serving a function in relevance detection [19,21] and allocating personal value to the stimulus.”

“…as vigilance or attention to unpredictable stimuli by modulating neuronal responsiveness in other brain areas, thereby promoting the gathering of additional information that is required for the formation of an adequate response (Adolphs, 2010; Bar and Neta, 2008; Pessoa, 2011; Sander et al., 2003).”

“As stated above, human amygdala function is most strongly linked to relevance detection (Pessoa & Adolphs, 2010; Sander et al., 2003).”

“In the amygdala these processes likely reflect relevance detection and the modulation of regions associated with stimulus processing [8,44,50].”

“Historically, the amygdala was thought to respond primarily to negative or fear-inducing stimuli, 28-30 but more recent work has shown that the amygdala also responds to positive, 31-33 arousing, 34 uncertain, 35 or motivationally relevant 20,36,37 stimuli.”

“…research and theory suggests that the amygdala is sensitive to stimuli of any valence that are motivationally relevant and salient, signaling to the organism what is important in the environment and worth paying attention to (Cunningham, Van Bavel, & Johnsen, 2008; Sander, Grafman, & Zalla, 2003).”

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“Neuroimaging studies suggested that the amygdala (O¨hman et al., 2007; Sander et al., 2003; Sergerie et al., 2008) and the insular cortex (Mataix-Cols et al., 2008; Mathews et al., 2004) are involved in the processing of threatening stimuli.”

“We phenomenologically understand emotions as relevance detectors occurring at behavioural, cognitive and physiological modalities that guide the decision process (Sander et al., 2003).”

“Surprise might have been primarily elicited by changes in colour but the latter were not particularly salient or unexpected given the task structure, hence they may conceptually be akin to perceptual novelty rather than affective relevance (Sander et al., 2003).”

“Previous literature has shown that the amygdala may function as a salience or relevance detector, activating in response to novel, significant, or arousing information of positive and negative valences (Hamann et al., 1999; Sander et al., 2003).”

“The amygdala subsequently acts as a saliency detector 55,56 transferring the incoming sensory information directly or via the basal/lateral nucleus (BLA) to the centralnucleus(CeA).”