The role of the amygdala in the perception of positive emotions: an “intensity detector”

Bonnet, Louise; Comte, Alexandre; Tatu, Laurent; Millot, Jean-Louis; Moulin, Thierry; Bustos, Elisabeth Medeiros de

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00178

Cited by 88 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(100 reference statements)

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“…The findings of the present study are also in accordance with previous studies with respect to other stimulus categories that showed that high as compared to low arousing emotional stimuli produced stronger amygdalar activation independent of stimulus valence (e.g., pictures, odors, and words; Hamann and Mao, 2002; Anderson et al, 2003; Sabatinelli et al, 2005; Winston et al, 2005; Straube et al, 2011b; Laeger et al, 2012; Bonnet et al, 2015). Taken these studies and our present study together, it can be concluded that the amygdala is a detector of subjective relevance of stimuli across different categories of stimuli, including faces.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…In terms of emotional pictures, amygdalar activation was found to be stronger for both positive and negative as compared to neutral pictures (e.g., Kensinger and Schacter, 2006; Kanske et al, 2011). Pictures with high arousal were found to yield enhanced activations in the amygdala, regardless of emotional valence (e.g., Phan et al, 2003; Sabatinelli et al, 2005; Fastenrath et al, 2014; Bonnet et al, 2015). For odors, Royet et al (2000) reported stronger amygdalar activation for pleasant and unpleasant as compared to neutral odors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Intensity of Facial Expressions on Amygdalar Activation Independently of Valence

Lin

Mueller-Bardorff

Mothes-Lasch

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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For several stimulus categories (e.g., pictures, odors, and words), the arousal of both negative and positive stimuli has been shown to modulate amygdalar activation. In contrast, previous studies did not observe similar amygdalar effects in response to negative and positive facial expressions with varying intensity of facial expressions. Reasons for this discrepancy may be related to analytical strategies, experimental design and stimuli. Therefore, the present study aimed at re-investigating whether the intensity of facial expressions modulates amygdalar activation by circumventing limitations of previous research. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess brain activation while participants observed a static neutral expression and positive (happy) and negative (angry) expressions of either high or low intensity from an ecologically valid, novel stimulus set. The ratings of arousal and intensity were highly correlated. We found that amygdalar activation followed a u-shaped activation pattern with highest activation to high intense facial expressions as compared to low intensity facial expressions and to the neutral expression irrespective of valence, suggesting a critical role of the amygdala in valence-independent arousal processing of facial expressions. Additionally, consistent with previous studies, intensity effects were also found in visual areas and generally increased activation to angry versus happy faces were found in visual cortex and insula, indicating enhanced visual representations of high arousing facial expressions and increased visual and somatosensory representations of threat.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Intensity of Facial Expressions on Amygdalar Activation Independently of Valence

Lin

Mueller-Bardorff

Mothes-Lasch

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Rising sound intensity has been proposed as an elementary auditory warning cue (Neuhoff, 1998), and has been demonstrated to activate the right amygdala more than a comparable decline in sound intensity (Bach et al, 2008). This finding is compatible with findings in the visual modality associating the amygdala with emotional intensity detection (Bonnet et al, 2015), and more generally with emotional relevance detection (Sander et al, 2003a). …”

Section: Perception Of Emotional Non-verbal Vocalizationssupporting

confidence: 91%

The Language, Tone and Prosody of Emotions: Neural Substrates and Dynamics of Spoken-Word Emotion Perception

2016

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Rapid assessment of emotions is important for detecting and prioritizing salient input. Emotions are conveyed in spoken words via verbal and non-verbal channels that are mutually informative and unveil in parallel over time, but the neural dynamics and interactions of these processes are not well understood. In this paper, we review the literature on emotion perception in faces, written words, and voices, as a basis for understanding the functional organization of emotion perception in spoken words. The characteristics of visual and auditory routes to the amygdala—a subcortical center for emotion perception—are compared across these stimulus classes in terms of neural dynamics, hemispheric lateralization, and functionality. Converging results from neuroimaging, electrophysiological, and lesion studies suggest the existence of an afferent route to the amygdala and primary visual cortex for fast and subliminal processing of coarse emotional face cues. We suggest that a fast route to the amygdala may also function for brief non-verbal vocalizations (e.g., laugh, cry), in which emotional category is conveyed effectively by voice tone and intensity. However, emotional prosody which evolves on longer time scales and is conveyed by fine-grained spectral cues appears to be processed via a slower, indirect cortical route. For verbal emotional content, the bulk of current evidence, indicating predominant left lateralization of the amygdala response and timing of emotional effects attributable to speeded lexical access, is more consistent with an indirect cortical route to the amygdala. Top-down linguistic modulation may play an important role for prioritized perception of emotions in words. Understanding the neural dynamics and interactions of emotion and language perception is important for selecting potent stimuli and devising effective training and/or treatment approaches for the alleviation of emotional dysfunction across a range of neuropsychiatric states.

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“…The amygdala is not only activated by negative or aversive stimuli (LeDoux 2000), but is sensitive to the relative intensity of positive stimuli (Bonnet et al 2015). However, there also is evidence for the lateralization of amygdala function in the context of emotional processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in neural responses to subliminal sad and happy faces in healthy individuals: Implications for depression

Victor

Drevets

Misaki

et al. 2016

J of Neuroscience Research

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Twice as many women as men suffer from mood and anxiety disorders, yet the biological underpinnings of this phenomenon have been understudied and remain unclear. We and others have shown that the hemodynamic response to subliminally-presented sad or happy faces during fMRI is a robust biomarker of the attentional bias towards negative information classically observed in major depression. Here we used fMRI to compare the performance of healthy females (n=28) and healthy males (n=28) on a backward masking task using a fast event-related design with gradient-recalled, echoplanar imaging with sensitivity encoding. The image data were compared across groups using a region-of-interest analysis with small volume correction to control for multiple testing (pcorrected<0.05, cluster size ≥ 20 voxels). Notably, compared to males, females showed greater BOLD activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and the right hippocampus when viewing masked sad versus masked happy faces. Further, females displayed reduced BOLD activity in the right pregenual ACC and left amygdala when viewing masked happy versus masked neutral faces. Given that we have previously reported similar findings in depressed participants compared with healthy controls (irrespective of gender), our results raise the possibility that on average healthy females show subtle emotional processing biases that conceivably reflect a subgroup of women predisposed to depression. Nevertheless, we note that the differences between males and females were small and derived from region-of-interest rather than voxel-wise analyses.

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The role of the amygdala in the perception of positive emotions: an “intensity detector”

Cited by 88 publications

References 60 publications

Effects of Intensity of Facial Expressions on Amygdalar Activation Independently of Valence

Effects of Intensity of Facial Expressions on Amygdalar Activation Independently of Valence

The Language, Tone and Prosody of Emotions: Neural Substrates and Dynamics of Spoken-Word Emotion Perception

Sex differences in neural responses to subliminal sad and happy faces in healthy individuals: Implications for depression

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