Glossary // Glossary term Empirical
Amygdala
A pair of almond-shaped clusters of nuclei in the medial temporal lobes. Imaging studies associate amygdala activity with the salience and relevance of stimuli, including but not limited to threat, and with learning about them. Popular descriptions of it as 'the fear centre' are not supported: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies found that the amygdala was active across several emotion categories and during non-emotional tasks, and that discrete emotions could not be consistently localised to single regions. Affective computing promises to infer emotion as if it were a system metric. The evidence on facial movements and autonomic signals, together with questions of consent, explains why every metric in this artifact is an artistic value. The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at. (2012). The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11000446 Supports the claim that there was little evidence for consistent and specific localisation of discrete emotion categories to distinct brain regions, and that interacting regions also involved in non-emotional operations were active across categories. Imaging findings are correlational with respect to emotion categories, so it is graded D; it was published with open peer commentaries, which were not reviewed here. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x Supports the claim that affect labelling was associated with reduced amygdala response and increased right ventrolateral prefrontal activity. Standardised images, not personal events, and no measure of later recovery.Where the site uses it
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