Friday, August 31, 2007

ARTICLE UPDATE - Amygdala activation in affective priming: a magnetoencephalogram study.

Garolera M, Coppola R, Muñoz KE, Elvevåg B, Carver FW, Weinberger DR, Goldberg TE.

NeurReport, 18, 1449-1453

We employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine amygdala activity during a linguistic affective priming task. The experimental design included positive and negative word pairs. Using synthetic aperture magnetometry in the analysis of MEG data, we identified a left amygdala power increase in the theta frequency range during priming involving negative words. We found that the amygdala displayed a time-dependent intensification in responsiveness to negative stimuli, specifically between 150 and 400 ms after target presentation. This study provides evidence for theta power changes in the amygdala and demonstrates that the analysis of brain oscillations provides a powerful tool to explore mechanisms implicated in emotional processing.

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