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The amygdala in a nutshell: A comprehensive

and current view The human amygdala. Paul J.
Whalen & Elizabeth A. Phelps (Eds.)
Mikle South

Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience, Brigham Young University, Provo,

Utah, USA
Available online: 21 Apr 2010

To cite this article: Mikle South (2010): The amygdala in a nutshell: A comprehensive and current view The human
amygdala. Paul J. Whalen & Elizabeth A. Phelps (Eds.) , Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 32:8,
909-910
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JOURNAL OF CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

2010, 32 (8), 909910

NCEN

Book review

The amygdala in a nutshell: A comprehensive and current view

The human amygdala. (2009). Paul J. Whalen &
Elizabeth A. Phelps (Eds.). New York: Guilford.
Pp. 429. Price $60.00. ISBN 9781606230336.

Downloaded by [Universitara M Emineescu Iasi] at 05:26 17 November 2011

Book Review

A few years ago I presented a conference poster on fear

learning in autism and was approached by David Amaral, who is a pioneer in mapping of the amygdala in nonhuman primates (see e.g., Amaral & Price, 1984). Dr.
Amaral kindly listened to several of the theories we were
working on to explain our data, all based on rodent
models of amygdala function. He then gently but simply
stated, monkeys are different than rats, sending me
back to the literature to try to decipher the differences in
neural anatomy and function of the amygdala across
species and how they relate to the understanding of
autism in humans.
The task would have been much simpler had this new
text, The human amygdala, already been available. The
term amygdala refers to relatively small region of subcortical gray matter located in the medial temporal lobe
just rostral to the hippocampus. It is known to have hundreds of reciprocal interactions throughout the brain
and is thought to play critical roles in the recognition
and regulation of emotion. Research with animal models
over the past 80 or so years has contributed substantial
knowledge about subdivisions of the region and their
associated functions. However, understanding of the
amygdala has grown seemingly exponentially since the
advent of improved lesion techniques and genetic manipulation in animals and functional neuroimaging technology in humans. Nonetheless, there remain vital
unanswered questions about the translation of animal
work to analogue human models, and new puzzles that
appear from the neuroimaging research.
This volume, edited by Paul J. Whalen and Elizabeth
A. Phelps, brings together a truly comprehensive set of
experts to provide the most up-to-date information on
what is known about the amygdala in both typical and
atypical human development. The book is divided into
three sections. Part I reviews evidence for the relevance
of animal models in understanding humans. Part II considers many roles of the amygdala in the healthy brain.
Part III looks at the role of the amygdala in the psychopathology in four clinical conditions; there is also a
chapter on the genetics of amygdala reactivity. Together,
the book is a fine summary of the extant literature, and
most chapters are embedded within interesting and
important conceptual frameworks. Each chapter ends

with a useful What We Think conclusion that

transitions between past and future. Although one or
two concluding chapters to unify the critical re-occurring
themes would have been helpful, I view it as a strength
that the editors let each set of authors tell their own
story, without any bias or compulsory framework despite
the several controversial issues addressed here (for example,
the role of experience in face perception, the interaction
of the amygdala in both positive and negative emotion,
and the control of fear). This book is thus an essential
contribution to the field and unquestionably belongs
near the desk of all students and faculty doing research
in the neural basis of emotion in humans.
Part I includes a separate chapter on rats, two on
monkeys, and one chapter that reviews research using a
particular experimental paradigm across rats, monkeys,
and humans. The chapters strike a fine balance of detail
and readability aided by color and black-and-white
photographic plates and many helpful cartoon drawings.
The strength of the opening chapter, about the primate
amygdala (Freese & Amaral), is in summarizing the
structural and functional connectivity within various
subdivisions of the amygdala and between those subdivisions and other subcortical and cortical brain regions.
The chapter by LeDoux and Schiller includes a careful
discussion of similarities and differences between rat and
primate models, as well as a helpful review of the
strengths and limitations of applying animal research to
humans. Myers and colleagues take a significant but
unconventional tack to look at fear inhibition rather than
fear conditioning. They find that although much remains
to be learned about the neural circuitry that underlies
fear inhibition, especially in humans, this paradigm is
another valuable tool to study cross-species similarities.
The sections final chapter (Murray, Izquierdo, &
Malkova) moves beyond negative affect and describes
specific mechanisms through which the primate
amygdala learns about rewarda theme that may be
especially relevant for understanding the mechanisms
that contribute to reciprocal social interaction.
Part II is the longest section, reviewing many of the
putative roles of the amygdala in healthy emotion regulation, attention, and social interaction. Two chapters
stand out for their topical content and for their strong
complement to the section on animals. First is a thorough consideration by Tottenham, Hare, and Casey of
genetic preparedness and environmental experience in
the development of face perception skills across

2010 The Author

http://www.psypress.com/jcen

DOI: 10.1080/13803391003625345

Downloaded by [Universitara M Emineescu Iasi] at 05:26 17 November 2011

910

BOOK REVIEW

childhood and into adulthood. Their provocative

suggestion that faces are a special class of conditioned
stimuli jumps into the middle of an intense debate over
the mechanisms that underlie face processing, and at the
same time offers a lovely overview of developmental
plasticity in the amygdala. Second, the chapter on methodological approaches to the study of the amygdala in
humans (LeBar and Warren) covers a wide variety of
techniques, including electrophysiology, lesion studies,
and structural and functional neuroimaging methods,
and the need to include concurrent, in-depth behavioral
assessment. It includes detailed discussion of significant
obstacles (such as signal artifact that results from the
particular placement of the amygdala).
The chapter on individual differences by Canli (complemented by Hariri and Weinbergers piece in Part III)
offers insight into two exciting branches of study: one at
a macro level (as in the case of neuroeconomics), and the
other at the micro level (as in genomic imaging, when
variation in neuroimaging response is analyzed in the
context of genotype variation, such as in the serotonin
transporter gene). This comprehensive section likewise
contains chapters on the perception and control of fear;
perception, attention, and memory, and response to
facial expressions and social interaction.
A primary purpose for the detailed study of brain
function is, of course, to learn how to help those whose
brain function is disrupted. A few such conditions are
summarized in Section III. Given the vast amount of
work that has been done on fear learning in the amygdala, the study of anxiety is particularly far along. The
chapter by Shin and colleagues discusses what happens
when adaptive functions of the brainsuch as the amygdalas facilitation of increased attention and information processing in response to threatbecome
maladaptive due to overactivity and/or the inability to
shut down when no longer necessary. Holt and Phillips do
a nice job of integrating behavioral and neuroimaging
findings of amygdala dysfunction in schizophrenia. They
suggest a relatively complete model through which differences in the recognition and avoidance of threatening
stimuli at the level of the amygdala map onto different
symptom subtypes (e.g., positive and negative symptoms).
The chapter on autism by Schumann and Amaral looks at
the role of the amygdala on separate but overlapping
impairments in both anxiety and reciprocal social interaction in the autism spectrum disorders. Their recent work,
which demonstrates age-related differences in amygdala
volume in autism, may go a long way towards reconciling
a host of disparate findings in this area: although some
past studies have reported larger amygdala volume in
autism, others smaller volume, and yet others no difference in volume, detailed analysis of larger samples indicates larger-than-normal growth in young children with
autism that plateaus around adolescence, so that typical
children catch up in size. Wrights chapter on aging provides an intriguing notion that decreased amygdala reactivity in older adults arises from their increased reliance on

top-down controlthat is, the relative stability of emotional response seen in normal aging can be seen in the
neural signature of relevant brain regions.
My only real disappointment in this book concerns
the limited big-picture view related to how the amygdala relates to the rest of the brain. This includes the
rest of the limbic system in particular, as well as visual
processing pathways in the temporal lobe. Several
chapters, noted throughout this review, deal well with
this subject. Other chapters tend to these connections
with much less depth. There is never a sense that the
amygdala is an island on its own, but an understanding
of the mechanisms that underlie complex human emotional and social behavior will clearly rely on systemic
models rather than analysis of individual structures.
Because of its place at the forefront of emotion detection, at the center of a complex web of subsequent neural response to emotion, the amygdala indeed deserves
special recognition. There are a number of published
review articles that summarize amygdala connectivity:
for example, reviews of emotional attention (Vuilleumier, 2005); of social cognition (Adolphs & Spezio,
2006); and an excellent conference report that contains
several good summaries of the connectivity of the limbic system in humans and in other species (Schoenbaum, Gottfried, & Murray, 2007). Nevertheless I
would have liked to read more in this book, perhaps
from the editors, on how to cohesively conceptualize
connections of the amygdala throughout the brain as a
guide for future research.
In sum, rapid advances in human and animal
research technology continue to expand our understanding of the amygdala in both healthy and disrupted
human development. This volume provides an excellent
summary of what we know now, and where we are
headed. If you do research anywhere in the field, you
should own it. I look forward to reading the next edition in eight or ten years to see how far weve come.
And next time I see David Amaral, perhaps Ill be able
to keep my species straight.
Mikle South
Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience, Brigham
Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

REFERENCES
Adolphs, R., & Spezio, M. (2006). Role of the amygdala in
processing visual social stimuli. Progress in Brain Research,
156, 363378.
Amaral, D. G., & Price, D. L. (1984). Amygdalo-cortical
projections in the monkey (Macaca fascicularis). Journal of
Comparative Neurology, 230, 465496.
Schoenbaum, G., Gottfried, J. A. & Murray, E. A. (2007).
Linking affect to action: Critical contributions of the
orbitofrontal cortex [Special issue] Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, 1121 (December).
Vuilleumier, P. (2005). How brains beware: Neural mechanisms of
emotional attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 585594.