The amygdala and the experience of affect
1Boston College and 2Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, MA, USA
The current study examined the hypothesis that amygdala activation serves as a neural precondition for negative affective experience. Participants’ affective experience was measured by asking them to report on their momentary experiences several times a day over the course of a month using an electronic experience-sampling procedure. One year later, participants viewed backwardly masked depictions of fear while functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure their amygdala and fusiform gyrus activation. Negative affect, as measured during the experience-sampling procedure 1-year prior, was positively correlated with amygdala activation in response to these brief presentations of fear depictions. Furthermore, descriptive analyses indicated that fusiform gyrus activation and negative affective experience in the scanner were associated for participants reporting increased nervousness during the imaging procedure. The results are consistent with the interpretation that the amygdala contributes to negative affective experience by increasing perceptual sensitivity for negative stimuli.
Correspondence should be addressed to Lisa Feldman Barrett Boston College, Department of Psychology, 427 McGuinn Hall, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167, USA. E-mail: barretli{at}bc.edu.
Received January 8, 2007. Accepted February 5, 2007.