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Amygdala volume and social network size in humans

Nature Neuroscience volume 14, pages 163–164 (2011)Cite this article

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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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Figure 1: Amygdala volume correlates with social network size and complexity.

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).

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Authors and 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

Authors
  1. Kevin C Bickart
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  2. Christopher I Wright
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  3. Rebecca J Dautoff
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  4. Bradford C Dickerson
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  5. 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.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisa Feldman Barrett.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Tables 1–3, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Results and Supplementary Discussion (PDF 345 kb)

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Bickart, K., Wright, C., Dautoff, R. et al. Amygdala volume and social network size in humans. Nat Neurosci 14, 163–164 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2724

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