Authors:

Scott, S.K., Young, A.W., Calder, A.J., Hellawell, D.J., Aggleton, J.P. & Johnson, M.

Reference:

Year of publication:

1997

CBU number:

3558

Abstract:

The amygdaloid complex is a medial temporal lobe structure which is widely considered to be involved in the neural substrates of emotion. Selective bilateral damage to the human amygdala is rare, offering unique insights into its functions. Recent studies have shown impairments of social perception after amygdala damage, with defective recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Among the basic emotions, the processing of fear and anger has been shown to be disrupted by amygdala damage. Although it remains puzzling why this is not found for all cases, the importance of the amygdala in negative emotion, and especially fear, has been confirmed with conditioning, memory, and PET paradigms. Central to our understanding of these findings is the question of whether the amygdala is involved specifically in the perception of visual signals of emotion emanating from the face, or more widely in the perception of emotion in all sensory modalities. We report a further investigation of one of these rare cases, DR, demonstrating impaired perception of intonation patterns essential to the perception of vocal affect, despite normal hearing. As is the case for recognition of facial expressions, it is recognition of fear and anger which is most severely affected in the auditory domain. This shows that the amygdala's role in the recognition of certain emotions is not confined to vision, consistent with its being involved in the appraisal of danger and the emotion of fear.