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Discriminating emotional faces without primary visual cortices involves the right amygdala

Nature Neuroscience volume 8, pages 24–25 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Destruction of the brain's primary visual areas leads to blindness of cortical origin. Here we report on a subject who, after bilateral destruction of his visual cortices and ensuing cortical blindness, could nevertheless correctly guess the type of emotional facial expression being displayed, but could not guess other types of emotional or non-emotional stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging showed activation of the right amygdala during the unconscious processing of emotionally expressive faces.

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Figure 1: Amygdala response to emotional faces (fear, anger and happiness) compared to neutral faces.

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Acknowledgements

We thank F. Bernasconi and E. Monbaron for providing us with the patient's neuropsychological examination, R. Rafal and P. Vuilleumier for helpful comments on the manuscript and J. Intriligator for methodological assistance. This investigation was supported by the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research (grants 3100-056782/99, 3151AO-102271/1 and 3200BO-100717/1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, University of Wales Bangor, Penrallt Road, Gwynedd, LL57 2AS, UK

    Alan J Pegna

  2. Department of Clinical Neuroscience and Dermatology, Neuropsychology Unit, Neurology Clinic, Geneva University Hospital, Rue Micheli-du-Crest 24, Geneva, 14, CH-1211, Switzerland

    Alan J Pegna & Asaid Khateb

  3. Department of Radiology, Geneva University Hospital, Rue Micheli-du-Crest 24, Geneva, 14, CH-1211, Switzerland

    Francois Lazeyras & Mohamed L Seghier

  4. Department of Fundamental Neuroscience, Laboratory of Neurology and Neuroimaging of Cognition, University Medical Center, Rue Michel-Servet 1, Geneva, 4, CH-1211, Switzerland

    Mohamed L Seghier

Authors
  1. Alan J Pegna
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  2. Asaid Khateb
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  3. Francois Lazeyras
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  4. Mohamed L Seghier
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Correspondence to Alan J Pegna.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Pegna, A., Khateb, A., Lazeyras, F. et al. Discriminating emotional faces without primary visual cortices involves the right amygdala. Nat Neurosci 8, 24–25 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1364

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