Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of emotionally salient events Export

@article{citeulike:361845, abstract = {Commensurate with the importance of rapidly and efficiently evaluating motivationally significant stimuli, humans are probably endowed with distinct faculties1, 2 and maintain specialized neural structures to enhance their detection. Here we consider that a critical function of the human amygdala3, 4 is to enhance the perception of stimuli that have emotional significance. Under conditions of limited attention for normal perceptual awareness—that is, the attentional blink5, 6—we show that healthy observers demonstrate robust benefits for the perception of verbal stimuli of aversive content compared with stimuli of neutral content. In contrast, a patient with bilateral amygdala damage has no enhanced perception for such aversive stimulus events. Examination of patients with either left or right amygdala resections shows that the enhanced perception of aversive words depends specifically on the left amygdala. All patients comprehend normally the affective meaning of the stimulus events, despite the lack of evidence for enhanced perceptual encoding of these events in patients with left amygdala lesions. Our results reveal a neural substrate for affective influences on perception, indicating that similar neural mechanisms may underlie the affective modulation of both recollective7, 8, 9 and perceptual experience.}, author = {Anderson, Adam K. and Phelps, Elizabeth A.}, citeulike-article-id = {361845}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/35077083}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/411305a0}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11357132}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=11357132}, day = {17}, doi = {10.1038/35077083}, issn = {0028-0836}, journal = {Nature}, keywords = {amygdala, attentional-blink, emotion, lesion, rsvp}, month = {May}, number = {6835}, pages = {305--309}, posted-at = {2007-05-12 05:09:34}, priority = {0}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}, title = {Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of emotionally salient events}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/35077083}, volume = {411}, year = {2001} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:361845 L3 - citeulike-article-id:361845 N2 - Commensurate with the importance of rapidly and efficiently evaluating motivationally significant stimuli, humans are probably endowed with distinct faculties1, 2 and maintain specialized neural structures to enhance their detection. Here we consider that a critical function of the human amygdala3, 4 is to enhance the perception of stimuli that have emotional significance. Under conditions of limited attention for normal perceptual awareness—that is, the attentional blink5, 6—we show that healthy observers demonstrate robust benefits for the perception of verbal stimuli of aversive content compared with stimuli of neutral content. In contrast, a patient with bilateral amygdala damage has no enhanced perception for such aversive stimulus events. Examination of patients with either left or right amygdala resections shows that the enhanced perception of aversive words depends specifically on the left amygdala. All patients comprehend normally the affective meaning of the stimulus events, despite the lack of evidence for enhanced perceptual encoding of these events in patients with left amygdala lesions. Our results reveal a neural substrate for affective influences on perception, indicating that similar neural mechanisms may underlie the affective modulation of both recollective7, 8, 9 and perceptual experience. IS - 6835 JF - Nature SN - 0028-0836 EP - 309 TI - Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of emotionally salient events PB - Nature Publishing Group VL - 411 SP - 305 KW - amygdala KW - attentional-blink KW - emotion KW - lesion KW - rsvp AU - Anderson, Adam AU - Phelps, Elizabeth PY - 2001/05/17/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/35077083 ER -