Human thalamic and amygdala modulation in emotional scene perception

Abstract

Emotional scene perception is associated with enhanced activity in ventral occipitotemporal cortex and amygdala. While a growing body of research supports the perspective that emotional perception is organized via amygdala feedback to rostral ventral visual cortex, the contributions of high-order thalamic structures strongly associated with visual attention, specifically the mediodorsal nucleus and pulvinar, have not been well investigated. Here we sample the activity of amygdala, MDN, pulvinar, and extrastriate ventral visual regions with fMRI as a group of participants view a mixed series of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant natural scenes, balanced for basic perceptual characteristics. The results demonstrate that all regions showed enhanced activity during emotionally arousing relative to neutral scene perception. Consistent with recent research, the latency of emotional discrimination across subcortical and visual cortical regions suggests a role for the amygdala in the early evaluation of scene emotion. These data support the perspective that higher order visual thalamic structures are sensitive to the emotional value of complex scene stimuli, and may serve in concert with amygdala and fusiform gyrus to modulate visual attention toward motivationally relevant cues.