A mechanism for impaired fear recognition after amygdala damage

被引:920
作者
Adolphs, R [1 ]
Gosselin, F
Buchanan, TW
Tranel, D
Schyns, P
Damasio, AR
机构
[1] Univ Iowa, Dept Neurol, Iowa City, IA 52242 USA
[2] CALTECH, Div Humanities & Social Sci, Pasadena, CA 91125 USA
[3] Univ Montreal, Dept Psychol, Montreal, PQ H3C 3J7, Canada
[4] Univ Glasgow, Dept Psychol, Glasgow G12 8QB, Lanark, Scotland
关键词
D O I
10.1038/nature03086
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Ten years ago, we reported that SM, a patient with rare bilateral amygdala damage, showed an intriguing impairment in her ability to recognize fear from facial expressions(1). Since then, the importance of the amygdala in processing information about facial emotions has been borne out by a number of lesion(2-4) and functional imaging studies(5,6). Yet the mechanism by which amygdala damage compromises fear recognition has not been identified. Returning to patient SM, we now show that her impairment stems from an inability to make normal use of information from the eye region of faces when judging emotions, a defect we trace to a lack of spontaneous fixations on the eyes during free viewing of faces. Although SM fails to look normally at the eye region in all facial expressions, her selective impairment in recognizing fear is explained by the fact that the eyes are the most important feature for identifying this emotion. Notably, SM's recognition of fearful faces became entirely normal when she was instructed explicitly to look at the eyes. This finding provides a mechanism to explain the amygdala's role in fear recognition, and points to new approaches for the possible rehabilitation of patients with defective emotion perception.
引用
收藏
页码:68 / 72
页数:5
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