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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on January 17, 2009
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2009 4(2):127-133; doi:10.1093/scan/nsn048
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The amygdala response to images with impact

Michael P. Ewbank1, Philip J. Barnard1, Camilla J. Croucher2, Cristina Ramponi1 and Andrew J. Calder1

1MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, and 2Department of Psychology, City University, London, UK

Effective photojournalism provokes an emotional reaction and leaves a lasting impression upon the viewer. Striking and memorable images are often said to possess ’impact’. Within cognitive neuroscience memorable emotional images evoke a greater amygdala response. Research to date has focused on arousal as a causative factor, while the contribution of appraisal dimensions relating to salience of an item, goal relevance, or impact are yet to be addressed. We explored how differences in ratings of impact influenced amygdala activity to negative emotional images matched for valence, arousal and other factors. Increased amygdala activation was found to high impact when compared to neutral images, or high impact when compared to low impact images (matched for arousal). Our findings demonstrate that the amygdala response to emotional stimuli is not a function of arousal (or valence) alone and accord more with the proposal that the amygdala responds to the significance or relevance of an event.

Keywords: Emotion; Arousal; Attention; Appraisal; fMRI

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Andrew J. Calder, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge, CB2 7EF, UK. E-mail: andy.calder{at}mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk

Received August 6, 2008. Accepted November 13, 2008.


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