Selective processing of social stimuli in the superficial amygdala

Goossens, Liesbet; Kukolja, Juraj; Onur, Oezguer A.; Fink, Gereon R.; Maier, Wolfgang; Griez, Eric; Schruers, Koen; Hurlemann, René

doi:10.1002/hbm.20755

Cited by 112 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This pattern is consistent with data from several previous experiments describing preferential amygdala activation to SOC stimuli including faces, pictures, or film-clips (e.g., Britton et al, 2006;Goossens et al, 2009;Hariri et al, 2002;Norris et al, 2004). These results also accord with recent proposals that the amygdala might be particularly tuned to the intrinsic salience or biological importance of SOC stimuli (Sander, Grafman, & Zalla, 2003), rather than to threat or other specific emotion categories.…”

Section: Amygdala Lateralization During Emotion Regulationsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…All findings for significant effects are summarized in Table 4. As expected, social scenes produced greater activation in widespread brain networks including extrastriate visual cortex, temporal lobe, and ventromedial prefrontal areas, all previously associated with face and body perception, person recognition, mentalizing, and/or social cognition (Britton et al, 2006;Goossens et al, 2009;Norris et al, 2004;. Conversely, nonsocial scenes produced greater activation in visual regions associated with object and place recognition, as well as insula, anterior cingulate, and more lateral areas in prefrontal cortex (see Table 1 and Fig.…”

Section: Fmri Datasupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Although exposure times of 2 s or even less are standard in fMRI research involving emotional stimuli and effective to activate relevant brain structures (e.g., Britton et al, 2006;Goossens et al, 2009;Hariri et al, 2002;Norris et al, 2004), may paradigms in the field of emotion regulation have employed longer picture viewing times (e.g., Beauregard et al, 2001;Kim & Hamann, 2007;Koenigsberg et al, 2010;Levesque et al, 2003;Mak et al, 2009;Ochsner et al, 2002;Ochsner, Ray et al, 2004). However, in contrast to these investigations where regulation strategies alternate on a trial-by-trial basis and hence require the search for imagespecific adjustments (e.g., re-interpretations during REAP), here we applied a blocked design where regulation could be implemented in a more sustained manner (as already used elsewhere, e.g., Harenski & Hamann, 2006;Phan et al, 2005) and was guided by controlled instructions (e.g., "pretend unreal" for the REAP strategy) for all stimulus conditions and all participants.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, this study did not compare brain activations elicited by social negative to comparable nonsocial negative scenes. This lack of systematic investigation of ER as a function of the content of emotion-eliciting stimuli is regrettable given many other findings which point to major differences in emotional reactions (and their corresponding neural signatures) depending on the social versus nonsocial nature of information (Britton et al, 2006;Frewen et al, 2010;Goossens et al, 2009;Hariri, Tessitore, Mattay, Fera, & Weinberger, 2002;Norris, Chen, Zhu, Small, & Cacioppo, 2004;Sander, Koenig, Georgieff, Terra, & Franck, 2005;Scharpf, Wendt, Lotze, & Hamm, 2010). In addition, there is evidence that the activation of some limbic brain areas (e.g., the amygdala) is more sensitive to social and thus interpersonal aspects rather than to nonsocial dimensions of emotion-eliciting situations (Killgore & YurgelunTodd, 2005;Vrtička, Andersson, Grandjean, Sander, & Vuilleumier, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We predicted changes in activations related to the differential encoding of valence (negative vs. positive) and/or stimulus content (social vs. nonsocial) in brain networks that are selectively tuned to social and affective information (Lieberman, 2007), including in particular the amygdala which has previously been shown to be sensitive to social cues (Britton et al, 2006;Frewen et al, 2010;Goossens et al, 2009;Hariri et al, 2002;Norris et al, 2004;Sander et al, 2005;Scharpf et al, 2010;Vrtička et al, 2008) and modulated by different ER strategies (Killgore & Yurgelun-Todd, 2005;Kim & Hamann, 2007;Koenigsberg et al, 2010;Levesque et al, 2003;Ochsner et al, 2002;Ochsner, Ray et al, 2004). Other differences were expected in prefrontal cortical areas that have been implicated in controlling emotion processing during different ER strategies (Goldin et al, 2008;Kim & Hamann, 2007;Levesque et al, 2003;Ochsner et al, 2002;Ochsner, Ray et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of emotion regulation strategy on brain responses to the valence and social content of visual scenes

2011

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a b s t r a c tEmotion Regulation (ER) includes different mechanisms aiming at volitionally modulating emotional responses, including cognitive re-evaluation (re-appraisal; REAP) or inhibition of emotion expression and behavior (expressive suppression; ESUP). However, despite the importance of these ER strategies, previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have not sufficiently disentangled the specific neural impact of REAP versus ESUP on brain responses to different kinds of emotion-eliciting events. Moreover, although different effects have been reported for stimulus valence (positive vs. negative), no study has systematically investigated how ER may change emotional processing as a function of particular stimulus content variables (i.e., social vs. nonsocial). Our fMRI study directly compared brain activation to visual scenes during the use of different ER strategies, relative to a "natural" viewing condition, but also examined the effects of ER as a function of the social versus nonsocial content of scenes, in addition to their negative versus positive valence (by manipulating these factors orthogonally in a 2 × 2 factorial design). Our data revealed that several prefrontal cortical areas were differentially recruited during either REAP or ESUP, independent of the valence and content of images. In addition, selective modulations by either REAP or ESUP were found depending on the negative valence of scenes (medial fusiform gyrus, anterior insula, dmPFC), and on their nonsocial (middle insula) or social (bilateral amygdala, mPFC, posterior cingulate) significance. Furthermore, we observed a significant lateralization in the amygdala for the effect of the two different ER strategies, with a predominant modulation by REAP on the left side but by ESUP on the right side. Taken together, these results do not only highlight the distributed nature of neural changes induced by ER, but also reveal the specific impact of different strategies (REAP or ESUP), and the specific sites implicated by different dimensions of emotional information (social or negative).

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Section: Amygdala Lateralization During Emotion Regulationsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Fmri Datasupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of emotion regulation strategy on brain responses to the valence and social content of visual scenes

2011

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Lonely in the Dark: Trauma Memory and Sex‐Specific Dysregulation of Amygdala Reactivity to Fear Signals

et al. 2022

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Loneliness exacerbates psychological distress and increases the risk of psychopathology after trauma exposure. However, it is still unclear whether a lack of social connectedness affects trauma-related intrusions and the neural processing of fear signals. Moreover, it is uncertain, whether loneliness plays a different role in women and men. A prestratification strategy is used and n = 47 (n = 20 women) healthy lonely individuals and n = 35 controls (n = 18 women) are recruited. Participants are exposed to an experimental trauma and evoked intrusive thoughts in daily life are monitored for three consecutive days. Functional magnetic resonance imaging is used to assess neural habituation to fearful faces and fear learning (conditioning and extinction) prior to trauma exposure. The results reveal a significant interaction between loneliness and sex such that loneliness is associated with more intrusions in men, but not in women. A similar pattern emerges at the neural level, with both reduced amygdala habituation to repeated fearful faces and amygdala hyperreactivity during the conditioning of fear signals in lonely men. The findings indicate that loneliness may confer vulnerability to intrusive memories after trauma exposure in healthy men and that this phenotype relates to altered limbic processing of fear signals.

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Neuronal types of the human cortical amygdaloid nucleus

Vásquez

Reberger

Dall'Oglio

et al. 2018

J of Comparative Neurology

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The human cortical amygdaloid nucleus (CoA) receives exteroceptive sensory stimuli, modulates the functions coded by the intrinsic amygdaloid circuit, and constitutes the beginning of the limbic lobe continuum with direct and indirect connections toward subcortical, allocortical, and higher order neocortical areas. To provide basic data on the human CoA, we characterized and classified the neurons using the thionin and the "single-section" Golgi method adapted for postmortem brain tissue and light microscopy. We found 10 different types of neurons named according to the morphological features of the cell body, dendritic branches, and spine distribution. Most cells are multipolar spiny neurons with two or more primary dendrites, including pyramidal-like ones. Three-dimensional reconstructions evidenced the types and diversity of the dendritic spines in each neuron. The unlike density of spines along dendritic branches, from proximal to distal ones, indicate that the synaptic processing and plasticity can be different in each CoA neuron. Our study provides novel data on the neuronal composition of the human CoA indicating that the variety of cells in this region can have phylogenetic, ontogenetic, morphological, and likely functional implications for the integrated human brain function. This can reflect both a more complex subcortical synaptic processing of sensory and emotional information and an adaptation for species-specific social behavior display.

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Selective processing of social stimuli in the superficial amygdala

Cited by 112 publications

References 33 publications

Effects of emotion regulation strategy on brain responses to the valence and social content of visual scenes

Effects of emotion regulation strategy on brain responses to the valence and social content of visual scenes

Lonely in the Dark: Trauma Memory and Sex‐Specific Dysregulation of Amygdala Reactivity to Fear Signals

Neuronal types of the human cortical amygdaloid nucleus

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