PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Dean Sabatinelli
AU  - Peter J. Lang
AU  - Margaret M. Bradley
AU  - Vincent D. Costa
AU  - Andreas Keil
TI  - The Timing of Emotional Discrimination in Human Amygdala and Ventral Visual Cortex
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3278-09.2009
DP  - 2009 Nov 25
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 14864--14868
VI  - 29
IP  - 47
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/47/14864.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/47/14864.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.2009 Nov 25; 29
AB  - Models of visual emotional perception suggest a reentrant organization of the ventral visual system with the amygdala. Using focused functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans with a sampling rate of 100 ms, here we determine the relative timing of emotional discrimination in amygdala and ventral visual cortical structures during emotional perception. Results show that amygdala and inferotemporal visual cortex differentiate emotional from nonemotional scenes ∼1 s before extrastriate occipital cortex, whereas primary occipital cortex shows consistent activity across all scenes. This pattern of discrimination is consistent with a reentrant organization of emotional perception in visual processing, in which transaction between rostral ventral visual cortex and amygdala originates the identification of emotional relevance.