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Updated: Jul 12, 2025
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Brain Imaging Investigation of the Impairing Effect of Emotion on Cognition
Published on: February 1, 2012
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Functional connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex underlies processing of emotion ambiguity
Sai Sun1,2, Hongbo Yu3, Rongjun Yu4
1Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University 6-3 Aramaki aza Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan. sun.sai.e2@tohoku.ac.jp.
Translational Psychiatry
|October 29, 2023
Summary
This study reveals how the brain processes ambiguous facial emotions using multimodal analysis. It identifies key brain regions and their connections involved in understanding and resolving emotional ambiguity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Affective Science
Background:
- Facial emotion processing relies on a distributed brain network.
- Judging ambiguous emotional expressions requires multi-area brain coordination.
Purpose of the Study:
- To understand the neural mechanisms of perceptual ambiguity in facial expressions.
- To achieve a network-level understanding using multimodal functional connectivity analysis.
Main Methods:
- Multimodal functional connectivity analysis.
- Direct neuronal recordings in neurosurgical patients.
- Electroencephalography (EEG) coherence and source connectivity analysis.
Main Results:
- Directional effective connectivity found between amygdala, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).
- Amygdala and dmPFC neuronal responses modulated by emotion ambiguity, with amygdala responding earlier.
- Parietal-frontal coherence and delta-alpha cross-frequency coupling implicated in encoding emotion ambiguity.
- EEG source connectivity indicated dmPFC exerts top-down regulation.
Conclusions:
- A neural network involving amygdala-PFC connectivity underlies emotion ambiguity processing.
- Both bottom-up and top-down processes are crucial for resolving ambiguity.
- Dysfunctions in amygdala-PFC connectivity may relate to altered behavioral responses in neuropsychiatric patients.
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