Regional activity within the human amygdala varies with season, mood and illuminance.

ABSTRACT: The brain mechanisms through which changes in season and light exposure modulate mood may involve different nuclei of the amygdala. We aimed to test this hypothesis using 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging in 29 healthy young adults. We first considered time-of-year changes in activity that are related to the slow change in photoperiod. We find that the response to emotional stimuli of selected medial and superior nuclei of the amygdala peaked around the start of winter or increased with worse mood status. We further assessed how alternating short exposures to light of different illuminance acutely affected the regional activity of the amygdala. We show that the same areas showed a linear reduction of activity when exposed to increasing light illuminance, specifically when proce

SUBMITTER: Campbell I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12748982 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature