Abstract
Amygdala and Emotion: The Bright Side of It.
Highlights
It has long been known that the amygdala, a bilateral structure from the medial temporal lobe, is related to emotion, in processing of aversive information (e.g., LeDoux, 1996)
The activation of both motivating systems by pleasant or unpleasant external and internal events can vary by intensity, which is described as the strength of motivational mobilization (Russell, 2003; Lang and Bradley, 2013)
A new study by Bonnet et al (2015) provides additional evidence for such an “arousal” view. In this fMRI study, BOLD activity was measured while participants viewed pleasant visual scenes that varied in emotional arousal
Summary
It has long been known that the amygdala, a bilateral structure from the medial temporal lobe, is related to emotion, in processing of aversive information (e.g., LeDoux, 1996). Accumulating evidence suggests that amygdala activation is involved in processing pleasant information, as observed, for instance, in studies using reward-learning (e.g., Adolphs, 2010; Janak and Tye, 2015), episodic memory encoding (e.g., Hamann et al, 1999; Dolcos et al, 2004), pleasant scene or face perception (e.g., Sabatinelli et al, 2011) or mental imagery of pleasant experiences (e.g., Costa et al, 2010).
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