Emotional Automaticity Is a Matter of Timing
- 1Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program,
- 2Magnetoencephalography Core Facility, and
- 3Genes, Cognition, and Psychosis Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892
- Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Qian Luo, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, 15K North Drive, Mail Stop Code 2670, Bethesda, MD 20892-2670. luoj{at}mail.nih.gov
Abstract
There has been a long controversy concerning whether the amygdala's response to emotional stimuli is automatic or dependent on attentional load. Using magnoencephalography and an advanced beamformer source localization technique, we found that amygdala automaticity was a function of time: while early amygdala responding to emotional stimuli (40–140 ms) was unaffected by attentional load, later amygdala response (280–410 ms), subsequent to frontoparietal cortex activity, was modulated by attentional load.
- Copyright © 2010 the authors 0270-6474/10/305825-05$15.00/0
