Effects of gaze on amygdala sensitivity to anger and fear faces

Science

Volumn 300, Issue 5625, 2003, Pages 1536-

  Adams Jr , Reginald B ^a,b   Gordon, Heather L ^a   Baird, Abigail A ^a   Ambady, Nalini ^b   Kleck, Robert E ^a  

^a DARTMOUTH COLLEGE   (United States)

^b HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BEHAVIOR;

AFFECT; AMYGDALOID NUCLEUS; ANGER; ARTICLE; FACIAL EXPRESSION; FEAR; GAZE; NEUROPSYCHOLOGY; NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; PERCEPTION; PREDICTION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS;

AMYGDALA; ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE; ANGER; CUES; FACIAL EXPRESSION; FEAR; FEMALE; FIXATION, OCULAR; HUMANS; MALE; VISUAL PERCEPTION;

EID: 0037905422     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.1082244     Document Type: Article

References (7)

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3. R. B. Adams Jr., R. E. Kleck, Psychol. Sci., in press.
4. B. Wicker, D. I. Perrett, S. Baron-Cohen, J. Decety, Neuropsychologia 41, 139 (2003).
5. A. W. Young J. P. Aggleton, D. J. Hellawell, M. Johnson, Brain 118, 15 (1995).
6. Eleven participants (8 male) categorized the gender of randomly presented faces displaying anger or fear coupled with direct or averted (left or right) gaze (fig. S1). Stimuli were back-projected onto a screen for viewing inside the MRI. A total of 30 exemplar faces (15 female) were randomly presented twice in each condition for a total of 120 trials in an event-related design. Sixty trials of low-intensity joy were also included to avoid habituation effects. Stimuli were preceded by a 500-ms fixation cross and remained on screen for 2000 ms. Functional images were acquired in a 1.5T GE Signa system using a gradient echoplanar T2*-sequence sensitive to blood-oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast. Image volumes consisted of 25 noncontiguous slices (4.5 mm thickness, 1 mm gap, 64 by 64 matrix, repetition time = 2.5 s, TE = 40 ms, flip angle = 90°, field of view = 24 by 24 cm) covering the whole brain. All images were corrected for slice timing, realigned, coregistered, normalized, and smoothed (4 mm full-width at half-maximum) using default parameters in SPM99. Our analyses were restricted to the left and right amygdalae based on contrasts between fear and baseline (average activation of voxels) using random-effects models in SPM99 (height: P < 0.01, uncorrected; extent: 5 voxels). The data were examined for the presence of sex of participant effects and none were found.
7. We thank P. Janata, J. Kagan, W. Kelley, K. Nakayama, and S. Grafton for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This research was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation 0121947 (to R.B.A. Jr.), a National Research Service Award, National Institute of Mental Health 1F32MH067294-01 (to R.B.A. Jr.), and a Rockefeller Reiss Family Senior Faculty grant (to R.E.K.)