Amygdala Activation for Eye Contact Despite Complete Cortical Blindness
Open accessAbstract
Cortical blindness refers to the loss of vision that occurs after destruction of the primary visual cortex. Although there is no sensory cortex and hence no conscious vision, some cortically blind patients show amygdala activation in response to facial or bodily expressions of emotion. Here we investigated whether direction of gaze could also be processed in the absence of any functional visual cortex. A well-known patient with bilateral destruction of his visual cortex and subsequent cortical blindness was investigated in an fMRI paradigm during which blocks of faces were presented either with their gaze directed toward or away from the viewer. Increased right amygdala activation was found in response to directed compared with averted gaze. Activity in this region was further found to be functionally connected to a larger network associated with face and gaze processing. The present study demonstrates that, in human subjects, the amygdala response to eye contact does not require an intact primary visual cortex.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The text we found for this paper looks like another document, so the self-check wasn’t run.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 37 · Cited by 118
- Authors
- Burra, N., Hervais-Adelman, A., Kerzel, D., Tamietto, M., de Gelder, B., & Pegna, A. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Geneva (CH)
- Tilburg University (NL)
- Venue
- Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2013-06-19
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 25
- Pages
- 10483-10489
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6618602
- OpenAlex
- W2073519360
- Cited by
- 118
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 8.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- Research portal (Tilburg University) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Institutional Research Information System University of Turin (University of Turin) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (129459, 144187, 320030)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- cortical blindness, amygdala, eye contact, gaze direction, primary visual cortex, face processing, averted gaze, functional connectivity, emotional expression
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Amygdala, Brain Mapping, Eye, Female, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Functional Laterality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Occipital Lobe, Oxygen Consumption, Photic Stimulation, Social Behavior, Visual Cortex, Visual Fields, Expressed Emotion, Blindness, Cortical, Stroke
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
