Representation of face information in the human amygdala and prefrontal cortex
Final Report Abstract
The most valuable findings from this project were: 1. The amygdala neurons have a monotonic response pattern in response to parts of faces, inverse proportional to the response to the whole faces. These results suggest that the face representations in the human amygdala encode socially relevant information, such as identity of a person based on the entire face, rather than information about specific features such as the eyes. 2. Neurons in the amygdala of people with autism are driven preponderantly by the mouth, even if the participants have both eye and mouth information available, whereas amygdala neurons of people without autism respond to information offered by both the mouth and the eye regions in a face. These findings pinpoint a possible neuronal substrate for the observed behavioral deficit of making use of information from the eyes in people with autism. The most notable surprise in the development of the project was the unpredictability of patient availability and compliance, and also the wide range of possible difficulties in acquiring valuable data, ranging from health insurance issues to implantation accidents and patient willingness to participate in research. On a positive note, equally surprising was the unique opportunity to have recorded from a patient with autism while performing an emotion discrimination task, which to my knowledge is the first successful attempt ever made. Overall, the data that I did manage to gather is indeed very unique, very robust, and offers incredibly valuable insights into face processing in the amygdala. Related projects I am still working on will enable me to systematically analyze the precise role of the amygdala neurons in the coding of social information from faces.
Publications
- (2011) Single-Unit Responses Selective for Whole Faces in the Human Amygdala. Current Biology 21(19):1654-60
Rutishauser, U., Tudusciuc, O.,Neumann, D.,,Mamelak, A. N., Heller, A. C., Ross, I. B., Philpott, L., Sutherling, W. W., Adolphs, R
- Single-neuron correlates of face processing by the amygdala in autism. SfN meeting 2011, Washington, DC
Tudusciuc O, Rutishauser U, Neumann D, Mamelak A, Heller AC, Ross IB, Philpott L, Sutherling W, Adolphs R
