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Amygdala volume and social network size in humans

Nature Neuroscience 14, 163–164 (2011) | Download Citation

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  • A Corrigendum to this article was published on 26 August 2011

This article has been updated

Abstract

We found that amygdala volume correlates with the size and complexity of social networks in adult humans. An exploratory analysis of subcortical structures did not find strong evidence for similar relationships with any other structure, but there were associations between social network variables and cortical thickness in three cortical areas, two of them with amygdala connectivity. These findings indicate that the amygdala is important in social behavior.

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Change history

  • 05 July 2011

    In the version of this article initially published, the gender of participants was reversed and the gender of one participant was mislabeled. The correct demographics are 37 female and 21 male participants, with concomitant changes to the values in Table 1. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Michael Brickhouse for assistance with morphometric analyses. This study was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award (DP1OD003312) and the US National Institute on Aging (R01-AG030311, R01-AG029411 and R21-AG29840).

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

    • Kevin C Bickart

  2. Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA.

    • Christopher I Wright
    • , Rebecca J Dautoff
    • , Bradford C Dickerson
    •  & Lisa Feldman Barrett

  3. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA.

    • Christopher I Wright
    • , Rebecca J Dautoff
    • , Bradford C Dickerson
    •  & Lisa Feldman Barrett

  4. Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

    • Bradford C Dickerson

  5. Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

    • Lisa Feldman Barrett

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Contributions

C.I.W. and L.F.B. designed the study. R.J.D. and L.F.B. performed the research. K.C.B., R.J.D., B.C.D. and L.F.B. analyzed the data. K.C.B., B.C.D., C.I.W. and L.F.B. wrote the manuscript. B.C.D., C.I.W. and L.F.B. contributed to grant funding.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Supplementary information

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    Supplementary Text and Figures

    Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Tables 1–3, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Results and Supplementary Discussion

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2724

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