Amygdala activation for eye contact despite complete cortical blindness

Cortical blindness refers to the loss of vision that occurs after destruction of the primary visual cortex. Although there is no sensory cortex and hence no conscious vision, some cortically blind patients show amygdala activation in response to facial or bodily expressions of emotion. Here we inves...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of neuroscience Vol. 33; no. 25; pp. 10483 - 10489
Main Authors Burra, Nicolas, Hervais-Adelman, Alexis, Kerzel, Dirk, Tamietto, Marco, de Gelder, Beatrice, Pegna, Alan J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Society for Neuroscience 19.06.2013
Subjects
Adult
Amygdala - physiology
Blindness, Cortical - physiopathology
Brain Mapping
Expressed Emotion
Eye
Female
Fixation, Ocular - physiology
Functional Laterality - physiology
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Occipital Lobe - pathology
Oxygen Consumption - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Social Behavior
Stroke - pathology
Stroke - physiopathology
Visual Cortex - pathology
Visual Fields
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Cortical blindness refers to the loss of vision that occurs after destruction of the primary visual cortex. Although there is no sensory cortex and hence no conscious vision, some cortically blind patients show amygdala activation in response to facial or bodily expressions of emotion. Here we investigated whether direction of gaze could also be processed in the absence of any functional visual cortex. A well-known patient with bilateral destruction of his visual cortex and subsequent cortical blindness was investigated in an fMRI paradigm during which blocks of faces were presented either with their gaze directed toward or away from the viewer. Increased right amygdala activation was found in response to directed compared with averted gaze. Activity in this region was further found to be functionally connected to a larger network associated with face and gaze processing. The present study demonstrates that, in human subjects, the amygdala response to eye contact does not require an intact primary visual cortex.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Case Study-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-4
content type line 23
ObjectType-Report-1
ObjectType-Article-3
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
Author contributions: N.B., D.K., B.d.G., and A.J.P. designed research; N.B., A.H.-A., M.T., B.d.G., and A.J.P. performed research; N.B., A.H.-A., M.T., B.d.G., and A.J.P. analyzed data; N.B., A.H.-A., D.K., M.T., B.d.G., and A.J.P. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0270-6474
1529-2401
1529-2401
DOI:10.1523/jneurosci.3994-12.2013