Effects of gaze direction, head orientation and valence of facial expression on amygdala activity.
There is increasing evidence for a role of the amygdala in processing gaze direction and emotional relevance of faces. In this event-related functional magnetic resonance study we investigated amygdala responses while we orthogonally manipulated head direction, gaze direction and facial expression (angry, happy and neutral). This allowed us to investigate effects of stimulus ambiguity, low-level factors and non-emotional factors on amygdala activation. Averted vs direct gaze induced increased activation in the right dorsal amygdala regardless of facial expression and head orientation. Furthermore, valence effects were found in the ventral amygdala and strongly dependent on head orientation. We observed enhanced activation to angry and neutral vs happy faces for observer-directed faces in the left ventral amygdala while the averted head condition reversed this pattern resulting in increased activation to happy as compared to angry and neutral faces. These results suggest that gaze direction drives specifically dorsal amygdala activation regardless of facial expression, low-level perceptual factors or stimulus ambiguity. The role of the amygdala is thus not restricted to the detection of potential threat, but has a more general role in attention processes. Furthermore, valence effects are associated with activation of the ventral amygdala and strongly influenced by non-emotional factors.
Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, GermanyDepartment of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany andreas.sauer@brain.mpg.de.
Andreas
A
Sauer
Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany.
Martin
M
Mothes-Lasch
Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany.
Wolfgang H R
WH
Miltner
Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, 07743 Jena, Germany, and Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany.
Thomas
T
Straube
D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
amygdala; attention; emotion; gaze