The role of the amygdala in emotional processing: a quantitative meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies

Functional neuroimaging studies have provided strong support for a critical role of the amygdala in emotional processing. However, several controversies remain in terms of whether different factors-such as sex, valence and stimulus type-have an effect on the magnitude and lateralization of amygdala responses. To address these issues, we conducted a meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of visual emotional perception that reported amygdala activation. Critically, unlike previous neuroimaging meta-analyses, we took into account the magnitude (effect size) and reliability (variance) associated with each of the activations. Our results confirm that the amygdala responds to both positive and negative stimuli, with a preference for faces depicting emotional expressions. We did not find evidence for amygdala lateralization as a function of sex or valence. Instead, our findings provide strong support for a functional dissociation between left and right amygdala in terms of temporal dynamics. Taken together, results from this meta-analysis shed new light on several of the models proposed in the literature regarding the neural basis of emotional processing.