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Raymond J Dolan
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REVIEW: NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY
A
n ability to ascribe value to events in by the 19th-century psychologist, William conditioned shapes) and a slower response to
CREDIT: (PAINTING) EDVARD MUNCH, THE SCREAM (1893) ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, NY
where a neutral stimulus, through pairing in
Fig. 1. An emotional-perceptual-memory circuit in the human brain. The amygdala (red), an temporal contiguity with an emotional stim-
anterior medial temporal lobe structure, is a crucial structure in registering emotional occurrences. ulus (for example, an aversive noise in fear
Extensive connection (arrows) to visual cortex (orange) and hippocampus (blue) allows amygdala conditioning), acquires an ability to predict
to modulate their function and facilitate perceptual and memory functions in those regions. future occurrences of this emotional event.
From a human behavioral perspective, the
criminatory responses to emotional faces are where attention is systematically manipu- importance of this form of memory is that it
seen in midline occipital cortex as early as 100 lated, an amygdala response to fearful faces provides a potential link between a psycho-
to 120 ms after stimulus onset, before the onset is independent of the concurrent focus of logical mechanism and psychopathological
of a characteristic face-related response at ap- attention (17 ). Studies involving patients conditions, such as phobias and post-traumat-
proximately 170 ms (11, 12). Intermodal bind- with either blindsight or visual extinction ic stress disorder (PTSD).
ing of emotion for presentation of anger in demonstrate an amygdala response to emo- Studies demonstrate that human amygdala
voice and face is associated with a distinct tional stimuli presented out of awareness in is critical for fear conditioning, a form of
electroencephalographic potential occurring at the damaged hemifield (18, 19). Residual implicit memory. Patients with amygdala
about 100 ms (13). Short-latency responses processing abilities for unaware emotional damage do not acquire conditioned fear re-
(120 to 160 ms) to aversive stimulus presenta- stimulus presentation are associated with sponses despite retaining explicit knowledge
tion are also seen during direct intracerebral engagement of a subcortical retino-collicu- regarding the conditioned (CS) and uncondi-
recordings within ventral prefrontal cortex (14). lar-pulvinar pathway specific to unaware tioned stimulus (UCS) associations (24). In
Thus, electrophysiological data point to rapid emotional stimulus processing (15, 18). contrast, patients with hippocampal damage
and widespread neuronal responses to emotion- The involvement of this pathway is of con- and intact amygdala preserve fear condition-
al stimuli that precede responses associated siderable interest, because it is also impli- ing despite being unable to demonstrate ex-
with actual stimulus identification which occur cated in residual visual processing evident plicit knowledge regarding CS-UCS contin-
at approximately 170 ms after stimulus onset. in patients with blindsight. One suggestion is gencies (25). Functional neuroimaging exper-
An important neurobiological question that certain classes of emotional stimuli, for iments also confirm the importance of the