Amygdala activity for the modulation of goal-directed behavior in emotional contexts.

ABSTRACT: Choosing valuable objects and rewarding actions is critical for survival. While such choices must be made in a way that suits the animal's circumstances, the neural mechanisms underlying such context-appropriate behavior are unclear. To address this question, we devised a context-dependent reward-seeking task for macaque monkeys. Each trial started with the appearance of one of many visual scenes containing two or more objects, and the monkey had to choose the good object by saccade to get a reward. These scenes were categorized into two dimensions of emotional context: dangerous versus safe and rich versus poor. We found that many amygdala neurons were more strongly activated by dangerous scenes, by rich scenes, or by both. Furthermore, saccades to target objects occurred more quickly in

SUBMITTER: Maeda K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5988268 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature