Behavioral Triggers of Skin Conductance Responses and Their Neural Correlates in the Primate Amygdala

Abstract

The amygdala plays a crucial role in evaluating the emotional significance of stimuli and in transforming the results of this evaluation into appropriate autonomic responses. Lesion and stimulation studies suggest involvement of the amygdala in the generation of the skin conductance response (SCR), which is an indirect measure of autonomic activity that has been associated with both emotion and attention. It is unclear if this involvement marks an emotional reaction to an external stimulus or sympathetic arousal regardless of its origin. We recorded skin conductance in parallel with single-unit activity from the right amygdala of two rhesus monkeys during a rewarded image viewing task and while the monkeys sat alone in a dimly lit room, drifting in and out of sleep. In both experimental conditions, we found similar SCR-related modulation of activity at the single-unit and neural population level. This suggests that the amygdala contributes to the production or modulation of SCRs regardless of the source of sympathetic arousal.

Monkey visual behavior falls into the uncanny valley

“…However, given the copious amounts of anecdotal evidence from humans, and the more recent empirical studies supporting the uncanny valley effect in humans (2, 3), it seems parsimonious to conclude that monkeys are also experiencing at least some of the same emotions. To support this notion, future experiments could incorporate somatic markers, such as skin conductance responses, pupil dilation, or facial electromyography, to measure the emotional responses of monkeys to the differently rendered faces from monkeys (17)(18)(19)(20). Neurophysiological and neuroimaging approaches could also be illuminating in this regard.…”

Assessment of Brain Monoaminergic Signaling Through Mathematical Modeling of Skin Conductance Response

“…the input neural signal for the SCR system) takes place in the interaction amygdala-hippocampus: "Outcome of the specific patterning of the match-mismatch process in the hippocampus/amygdala complex determines the precise constellation of signals to be either routed onward to the hypothalamus or aborted, and shapes the affective response or lack thereof to any stimulus event" (Hadley, 1989, p. 346;Laine et al, 2009;Phelps, 2004). In the amygdala-hippocampus interplay the role of the hippocampus is to detect novelty and unexpectedness of the stimulus (Kumaran & Maguire, 2007a, 2007bVinogradova, 1975).…”

Aversive-Bias and Stage-Selectivity in Neurons of the Primate Amygdala during Acquisition, Extinction, and Overnight Retention

“…Few lesion studies have explored retention and extinction (Izquierdo and Murray, 2005;Antoniadis et al, 2009), and early electrophysiological work has addressed changes in affective significance of stimuli (Sanghera et al, 1979;Nishijo et al, 1988). However, recent studies have mainly focused on momentary representations of value: single neurons were shown to code contextual information regarding reward schedules (Sugase-Miyamoto and Richmond, 2005;Bermudez and Schultz, 2010), expectation and state value (Belova et al, 2007), dynamically switch responses with emotional valence (Paton et al, 2006), process facial expressions and identity (Gothard et al, 2007;Kuraoka and Nakamura, 2007), and track the skin-conductance-response (SCR) that reflects emotional state (Laine et al, 2009).…”