Selective processing of social stimuli in the superficial amygdala

Abstract

The human amygdala plays a pivotal role in the processing of socially significant information. Anatomical studies show that the human amygdala is not a single homogeneous structure but is composed of segregable subregions. These have recently been functionally delineated by using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and cytoarchitectonically defined probabilistic maps. However, the response characteristics and individual contribution of these subregions to the processing of social-emotional stimuli are little understood. Here, we used this novel technique to segregate intra-amygdalar responses to facial expressions and nonsocial control stimuli. We localized facial expression-evoked signal changes bilaterally in the superficial amygdala, which suggests that this subregion selectively extracts the social value of incoming sensory information. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.