Amygdala Response to Facial Expressions Reflects Emotional Learning

Hooker, Christine I.; Germine, Laura; Knight, Robert T.; D’Esposito, Mark

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3048-05.2006

Cited by 91 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(57 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The amygdala neurons rapidly change their activity according to an association formed between unimodal stimuli and rewards or punishments in monkeys (Paton et al 2006) and in rats (Repa et al 2001). Recent study also showed that human amygdala is responsive to emotional learning from facial expressions (Hooker et al 2006). In this study, the monkeys had repeatedly experienced the simultaneous presentation of facial and vocal emotions.…”

Section: Supramodal Representation Of Emotionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Responses of Single Neurons in Monkey Amygdala to Facial and Vocal Emotions

Kuraoka

Nakamura²

2007

Journal of Neurophysiology

110

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Kuraoka K, Nakamura K. Responses of single neurons in monkey amygdala to facial and vocal emotions. J Neurophysiol 97: 1379 -1387, 2007. First published December 20, 2006; doi:10.1152/jn.00464.2006. The face and voice can independently convey the same information about emotion. When we see an angry face or hear an angry voice, we can perceive a person's anger. These two different sensory cues are interchangeable in this sense. However, it is still unclear whether the same group of neurons process signals for facial and vocal emotions. We recorded neuronal activity in the amygdala of monkeys while watching nine video clips of species-specific emotional expressions: three monkeys showing three emotional expressions (aggressive threat, scream, and coo). Of the 227 amygdala neurons tested, 116 neurons (51%) responded to at least one of the emotional expressions. These "monkey-responsive" neurons-that is, neurons that responded to monkey-specific emotional expression-preferred the scream to other emotional expressions irrespective of identity. To determine the element crucial to neuronal responses, the activity of 79 monkeyresponsive neurons was recorded while a facial or vocal element of a stimulus was presented alone. Although most neurons (61/79, 77%) strongly responded to the visual but not to the auditory element, about one fifth (16/79, 20%) maintained a good response when either the facial or vocal element was presented. Moreover, these neurons maintained their stimulus-preference profiles under facial and vocal conditions. These neurons were found in the central nucleus of the amygdala, the nucleus that receives inputs from other amygdala nuclei and in turn sends outputs to other emotion-related brain areas. These supramodal responses to emotion would be of use in generating appropriate responses to information regarding either facial or vocal emotion.

show abstract

Section: Supramodal Representation Of Emotionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Responses of Single Neurons in Monkey Amygdala to Facial and Vocal Emotions

Kuraoka

Nakamura²

2007

Journal of Neurophysiology

110

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A common example is observational fear learning in which one vicariously learns to fear a stimulus that elicits expressions of fear in a conspecific. Cross-species research demonstrates that learning fear through observing others shares behavioral [38,39] and neural features with conditioned fear, including involvement of the amygdala [37,40]. Although this suggests that low-level stimulusdriven processes have an important role in observational fear learning across species, recent work in humans suggests that, in addition to explicit knowledge about the stimulus contingencies, fear learning through observation might also involve higher-level reflective MSAs.…”

Section: Emotional Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of social cognition in emotion

Olsson

Ochsner

2008

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

246

183

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Therefore, it is difficult to identify whether amygdala activity reflects neural response to facial expression perception or association learning. We addressed this issue in a prior study; using an observational reversal learning paradigm, we found that the amygdala-hippocampal complex is more active when learning object-emotion associations from happy and fearful facial expressions as compared to perceiving happy and fearful facial expressions without learning (Hooker, Germine, Knight, & D'Esposito, 2006).…”

Section: Basic Models Of Classical Conditioning and Observational Leamentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning

et al. 2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fear and reward learning can occur through direct experience or observation. Both channels can enhance survival or create maladaptive behavior. We used fMRI to isolate neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning and investigate whether neural response varied according to individual differences in neuroticism and extraversion. Participants learned object-emotion associations by observing a woman respond with fearful (or neutral) and happy (or neutral) facial expressions to novel objects. The amygdala-hippocampal complex was active when learning the object-fear association, and the hippocampus was active when learning the object-happy association. After learning, objects were presented alone; amygdala activity was greater for the fear (vs. neutral) and happy (vs. neutral) associated object. Importantly, greater amygdalahippocampal activity during fear (vs. neutral) learning predicted better recognition of learned objects on a subsequent memory test. Furthermore, personality modulated neural mechanisms of learning. Neuroticism positively correlated with neural activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during fear (vs. neutral) learning. Low extraversion/high introversion was related to faster behavioral predictions of the fearful and neutral expressions during fear learning. In addition, low extraversion/high introversion was related to greater amygdala activity during happy (vs. neutral) learning, happy (vs. neutral) object recognition, and faster reaction times for predicting happy and neutral expressions during reward learning. These findings suggest that neuroticism is associated with an increased sensitivity in the neural mechanism for fear learning which leads to enhanced encoding of fear associations, and that low extraversion/high introversion is related to enhanced conditionability for both fear and reward learning.

show abstract

Amygdala Response to Facial Expressions Reflects Emotional Learning

Cited by 91 publications

References 53 publications

Responses of Single Neurons in Monkey Amygdala to Facial and Vocal Emotions

Responses of Single Neurons in Monkey Amygdala to Facial and Vocal Emotions

The role of social cognition in emotion

The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About