Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Affective Neuroscience

Background:

• Animal studies suggest opposing functions for the amygdala and ventral striatum.
• Human implications for emotion identification remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the functional relationship between the amygdala and ventral striatum during emotion identification in humans.
• Determine how these regions interact with other brain areas during threat and non-threat face perception.

Main Methods:

• High-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 39 healthy subjects.
• Emotion identification task involving threat (angry/fearful) and non-threat (sad/happy) faces.
• Functional connectivity analyses (seed-based and psychophysiological interaction).

Main Results:

• The amygdala showed increased activation to threat faces.
• A strong anticorrelation was found between the amygdala and ventral striatum/pallidum.
• Amygdala connectivity increased with the orbitofrontal cortex for threat faces, while ventral striatum connectivity increased with the posterior hippocampus for non-threat faces.

Conclusions:

• The amygdala and ventral striatum exhibit opposing roles in emotion identification.
• These regions may provide inverse affective bias signals during the processing of emotional stimuli.
• Functional connectivity patterns highlight distinct roles in threat and non-threat face perception.