Citation

Morrison SE, Salzman CD. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2010; 20(2): 221-230.

Affiliation

Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.conb.2010.02.007

PMID

20299204

PMCID

PMC2862774

Abstract

Recent advances indicate that the amygdala represents valence: a general appetitive/aversive affective characteristic that bears similarity to the neuroeconomic concept of value. Neurophysiological studies show that individual amygdala neurons respond differentially to a range of stimuli with positive or negative affective significance. Meanwhile, increasingly specific lesion/inactivation studies reveal that the amygdala is necessary for processes-for example, fear extinction and reinforcer devaluation-that involve updating representations of value. Furthermore, recent neuroimaging studies suggest that the human amygdala mediates performance on many reward-based decision-making tasks. The encoding of affective significance by the amygdala might be best described as a representation of state value-a representation that is useful for coordinating physiological, behavioral, and cognitive responses in an affective/emotional context.

Language: en