Is the human amygdala specialized for processing social information?
A number of studies in humans and other animals has confirmed the amygdala's role in modulating cognition and behavior on the basis of a stimulus' motivational, emotional, and social attributes. This raises the question of how these attributes are related: is social information processing reducible to motivational processing? Some recent data suggest the possibility that the amygdala's primitive function may be motivational processing that is domain-general, but that its function in primates, and especially humans, may have evolved to process social information specifically. While the issue is unresolved, future experiments could provide additional support.
Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA. ralph-adolphs@uiowa.edu
Ralph
R
Adolphs
D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D009928:Organ Specificity; D011323:Primates; D012919:Social Behavior; D013045:Species Specificity