The structural and functional connectivity of the amygdala: From normal emotion to pathological anxiety

By Justin M. Kim, R. Loucks, Amy L. Palmer, Annemarie C. Brown, Kimberly M. Solomon, shley N. Marchante, P. Whalen. Behavioural Brain Research, 2011

825 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The dynamic interactions between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are usefully conceptualized as a circuit that both allows us to react automatically to biologically relevant predictive stimuli as well as regulate these reactions when the situation calls for it. In this review, we will begin by discussing the role of this amygdala-mPFC circuitry in the conditioning and extinction of aversive learning in animals. We will then relate these data to emotional regulation paradigms in humans. Finally, we will consider how these processes are compromised in normal and pathological anxiety. We conclude that the capacity for efficient crosstalk between the amygdala and the mPFC, which is represented as the strength of the amygdala-mPFC circuitry, is crucial to beneficial outcomes in terms of reported anxiety.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aae78eafd6b1a653344c5e8e51a440f86e2658e6

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Citations in the corpus

Resting state functional connectivity in addiction: Lessons learned and a road ahead (2012, background): “Such a regulation-circuit perspective is bolstered by rsFC studies demonstrating that amygdala-vmPFC rsFC strength is inversely related to self-reported anxiety levels in non-clinical samples, where increased anxiety is associated with reduced connectivity (Kim et al., 2011a; Pezawas et al., 2005).”
The Development of Human Amygdala Functional Connectivity at Rest from 4 to 23 Years: a cross-sectional study (2014, neutral): “…that it is the functional connections between regions in these networks that underlie these affective and cognitive processes (Hariri et al., 2003; Kim et al., 2011a; Ochsner et al., 2012), and the strength of these functional connections has predicted emotional behaviors of healthy adults (Banks…”
Understanding resilience (2013, background): “…to interact with stressful life environment as well as polymorphisms from other genes (e.g., Val66Met in the BDNF gene) to predict susceptibility to depression (Kim et al., 2007, 2011a; Gatt et al., 2010), and to mediate HPA-axis activation and emotional response to stress (Brummett et al., 2012).”
Early developmental emergence of human amygdala–prefrontal connectivity after maternal deprivation (2013, background): “, mature) amygdala–mPFC connectivity (t(52) = 2.”
Predator‐induced stress and the ecology of fear (2013, background): “Humans with lesions of the amygdala have impaired fear-related behaviour (e.g. LaBar et al. 1995), and neuroimaging studies have shown greater activation of the amygdala in response to fear-provoking stimuli (Bryant et al. 2008; Kim et al. 2011).”
Fear Extinction as a Model for Translational Neuroscience: Ten Years of Progress (2012, methodology): “A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript increased activation of various prefrontal regions, including the vmPFC (for reviews, see Hartley & Phelps 2010, Kim et al 2011b).”
A Developmental Shift from Positive to Negative Connectivity in Human Amygdala-Prefrontal Circuitry (2013, result): “…coupling consisted of a switch from positive connectivity in younger children to negative connectivity among early adolescents and ultimately a strongly negative correlation in adulthood, replicating previous studies of adult amygdala–mPFC connectivity (Kim et al., 2003, 2011; Hare et al., 2008).”
Neurobiological Interactions Between Stress and the Endocannabinoid System (2016, background): “…impairments in termination of the stress response (McEwen, 2012b; Radley, 2012), and in humans, reduced functional connectivity of these circuits, or hyperactivity of the amygdala, results in increased anxiety and sensitivity to stress (Kim et al, 2011; Pruessner et al, 2010; Swartz et al, 2015).”
Childhood Adversity and Neural Development: A Systematic Review (2019, background): “…ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) and subgenual (sgACC), pregenual (pgACC) (sometimes referred to as rostral ACC), and dorsal (dACC) regions of anterior cingulate cortex (Dixon et al. 2017, Ghashghaei et al. 2007, Kim et al. 2011); we review the dACC separately in the section below titled Salience Network.”
The Role of Emotion Regulation in Autism Spectrum Disorder RH: Emotion Regulation in ASD (2013, neutral): “The subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, for example, plays an important role in the modulation of affective experiences.(63,64) Modulation of the amygdala (involved in the experience of emotion) by the ventromedial PFC (including the anterior cingulate cortex) is a prominent theme in affective neur”
Stereo‐Electroencephalography Reveals Dynamic Spatio‐Spectral Signatures of Negative Emotions: A Distributed Circuit Mechanism Involving Amygdala–Cingulate–Hippocampus–Orbitofrontal Networks (2025, unknown): “In contrast, OFC demonstrated no significant differences across the entire frequency band. autonomic arousal) through hypothalamic and brainstem projections (Kim et al. 2011).”
Human single-neuron activity is modulated by intracranial theta burst stimulation of the basolateral amygdala (2024, unknown): “The amygdala is a highly connected cluster of nuclei with input from multiple sensory modalities and vast projections to distributed cortical and subcortical regions involved in autonomic regulation and cognition ( Kim et al., 2011 ; McDonald and Mott, 2017 ; Roy et al., 2009 ; Stein et al., 2007 ).”