The human amygdala plays an important role in gaze monitoring. A PET study.
Social contact often initially depends on ascertaining the direction of the other person's gaze. We determined the brain areas involved in gaze monitoring by a functional neuroimaging study. Discrimination between the direction of gaze significantly activated a region in the left amygdala during eye-contact and no eye-contact tasks to the same extent. However, a region in the right amygdala was specifically activated only during the eye-contact task. Results confirm that the left amygdala plays a general role in the interpretation of eye gaze direction, and that the activity of the right amygdala of the subject increases when another individual's gaze is directed towards him. This suggests that the human amygdala plays a role in reading social signals from the face.
Kawashima
R
R
Department of Nuclear Medicine and Radiology, IDAC, Tohoku University, Aobaku, Sendai, Japan. ryuta@idac.tohoku.ac.jp
Sugiura
M
M
Kato
T
T
Nakamura
A
A
Hatano
K
K
Ito
K
K
Fukuda
H
H
Kojima
S
S
Nakamura
K
K
D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004585:Electrooculography; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012919:Social Behavior; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology