Feeling without seeing? engagement of ventral, but not dorsal, amygdala during unaware exposure to emotional faces

Authors:
Yulia Lerner;Neomi Singer;Tal Gonen;Yonatan Weintraub;Oded Cohen;Nava Rubin;Leslie G. Ungerleider;Talma Hendler
Affiliations:
-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-
Venue:
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Year:
2012

Citing 2
Cited 0

Face-specific processing in the human fusiform gyrus

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
In the eye of the beholder: Internally driven uncertainty of danger recruits the amygdala and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract

The ability to selectively perceive items in the environment may be modulated by the emotional content of those items. The neural mechanism that underlies the privileged processing of emotionally salient content is poorly understood. Here, using fMRI, we investigated this issue via a binocular rivalry procedure when face stimuli depicting fearful or neutral expressions competed for awareness with a house. Results revealed an interesting dissociation in the amygdala during rivalry condition: Whereas its dorsal component exhibited dominant activation to aware fearful faces, a ventral component was more active during the suppression of fearful faces. Moreover, during rivalry, the dorsal and ventral components of the amygdala were coupled with segregated cortical activations in the brainstem and medial PFC, respectively. In summary, this study points to a differential involvement of two clusters within the amygdala and their connected networks in naturally occurring perceptual biases of emotional content in faces.