부산대학교 도서관

Findings from case studies and functional imaging studies have shown that the human amygdala plays an important role in the recognition of emotion, especially fear. However, there is contradictory evidence as to whether amygdala damage consistently impairs emotion recognition. This probably depends on the etiology (congenital vs. adult-onset) and extension (selective amygdala damage vs. damage to the amygdala and other brain regions) of the lesion. In addition, the difference in the role of the amygdala in recognizing facial and non-facial expressions has not been investigated fully. We studied a patient with extensive amygdala damage after encephalitis, and investigated her ability to recognize emotion from facial (moving and static) , prosodic, and written verbal stimuli. The patient had a deficit in recognizing fear from prosodic and written verbal stimuli. On the other hand, she recognized emotions normally from moving facial expressions. In addition, she recognized facial expressions of sadness, anger, and disgust more correctly from moving than from static faces. Our results suggest that adult-onset amygdala damage causes a deficit in recognizing the emotion fear from prosodic and written stimuli when the lesion is extensive. In addition, previously reported deficits of facial expression recognition other than fear are possibly due to a lack of dynamic information.