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The amygdala accountant: new tricks for an old structure

Nature Neuroscience volume 18, pages 324–325 (2015)Cite this article

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What drives us to pursue distant, more valuable goals over more proximate, lesser ones? Counter to what you might expect, this type of advanced goal-directed planning and foresight in primates may involve the amygdala. In a reward savings task, neurons in the amygdala track the length and subjective value of internally generated plans.

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Figure 1: Neurons in the monkey amygdala track internally generated investment plans.

Katie Vicari/Nature Publishing Group

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clayton P. Mosher and Peter H. Rudebeck are at the Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA.,

    Clayton P Mosher & Peter H Rudebeck

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  1. Clayton P Mosher
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  2. Peter H Rudebeck
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Correspondence to Clayton P Mosher or Peter H Rudebeck.

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Mosher, C., Rudebeck, P. The amygdala accountant: new tricks for an old structure. Nat Neurosci 18, 324–325 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3949

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