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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 30, 2006, 26(35):8915-8922; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3048-05.2006

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Amygdala Response to Facial Expressions Reflects Emotional Learning

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

Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720-3190

Correspondence should be addressed to Christine I. Hooker, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, 132 Barker Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-3190. Email: chooker{at}berkeley.edu

The functional role of the human amygdala in the evaluation of emotional facial expressions is unclear. Previous animal and human research shows that the amygdala participates in processing positive and negative reinforcement as well as in learning predictive associations between stimuli and subsequent reinforcement. Thus, amygdala response to facial expressions could reflect the processing of primary reinforcement or emotional learning. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we tested the hypothesis that amygdala response to facial expressions is driven by emotional association learning. We show that the amygdala is more responsive to learning object–emotion associations from happy and fearful facial expressions than it is to the presentation of happy and fearful facial expressions alone. The results provide evidence that the amygdala uses social signals to rapidly and flexibly learn threatening and rewarding associations that ultimately serve to enhance survival.

Key words: amygdala; classical conditioning; emotion; fear; reward; fMRI

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Received July 22, 2005; revised July 12, 2006; accepted July 17, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Christine I. Hooker, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, 132 Barker Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-3190. Email: chooker{at}berkeley.edu

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				F. C. Davis, T. Johnstone, E. C. Mazzulla, J. A. Oler, and P. J. Whalen Regional Response Differences Across the Human Amygdaloid Complex during Social Conditioning Cereb Cortex, June 25, 2009; (2009) bhp126v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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