In other words, it is possible that participants were engaging in deeper semantic processing during rest/fixation than they are during the explicit semantic task and this could explain why the angular gyrus appeared to be deactivated in the semantic condition. However, this PD0332991 nmr account does not explain why the angular gyrus was only putative semantic region to display deactivation, while other regions (ATL, IFG) showed strong

positive activation. In summary, our results indicate that the role of angular gyrus is distinct from the representational and semantic control functions established for prefrontal and anterior temporal regions. Though its precise role is not clear as yet, we note that angular gyrus is positively activated by a range of non-semantic tasks, including numerical processing and episodic memory, suggesting that it may support more general attentional

and working memory functions (Cabeza, Ciaramelli, & Moscovitch, 2012). The research was supported by an MRC Programme Grant to MALR (MR/J004146/1), a Manchester Mental Health Social Care Trust fellowship to PH and a Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) award (097820) to the University of Manchester. “
“Extant theories implicate the amygdala in detection selleck products and prioritisation of threat-related information (LeDoux, 2000) and hence place it centre stage for disorders from the anxiety and fear spectrum. This view is based primarily on the non-human amygdala’s role in learning to predict acute threat, exemplified by fear conditioning. Yet, although several human individuals with selective amygdala lesion (SM, AM, BG) are reported to be impaired in verbal recognition and intensity rating of fearful face expression when there are no time constraints (Adolphs et al., 1994 and Becker et al., 2012), there is a spared ability in one of these

individuals, SM, to detect fearful faces under time constraints, or when no explicit evaluation of the depicted emotion is required (Tsuchiya, Moradi, Felsen, Yamazaki, & Adolphs, 2009). These findings are interpreted Sorafenib nmr as suggesting the human amygdala is not essential for early stages of fear processing but, instead, for modulation of recognition and social judgement (Tsuchiya et al., 2009). These conflicting views can be reconciled if one assumes that fearful faces – used in previous human lesion studies – are reformulated as representing threat, but not necessarily a threat to the observer. Hence, they constitute an important cue for social communication but not an unambiguous threat signal. A non-human literature posits a role for the amygdala in detection of threat to oneself, rather than to others. In this framework, probing detection of fearful faces does not address the question of threat detection. Angry face expression on the other hand is a more unambiguous threat signal.