Functional grouping and cortical–subcortical interactions in emotion: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

Abstract

We performed an updated quantitative meta-analysis of 162 neuroimaging studies of emotion using a novel multi-level kernel-based approach, focusing on locating brain regions consistently activated in emotional tasks and their functional organization into distributed functional groups, independent of semantically defined emotion category labels (e.g., "anger," "fear"). Such brain-based analyses are critical if our ways of labeling emotions are to be evaluated and revised based on consistency with brain data. Consistent activations were limited to specific cortical sub-regions, including multiple functional areas within medial, orbital, and inferior lateral frontal cortices. Consistent with a wealth of animal literature, multiple subcortical activations were identified, including amygdala, ventral striatum, thalamus, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray. We used multivariate parcellation and clustering techniques to identify groups of co-activated brain regions across studies. These analyses identified six distributed functional groups, including medial and lateral frontal groups, two posterior cortical groups, and paralimbic and core limbic/brainstem groups. These functional groups provide information on potential organization of brain regions into large-scale networks. Specific follow-up analyses focused on amygdala, periaqueductal gray (PAG), and hypothalamic (Hy) activations, and identified frontal cortical areas co-activated with these core limbic structures. While multiple areas of frontal cortex co-activated with amygdala sub-regions, a specific region of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC, Brodmann's Area 9/32) was the only area co-activated with both PAG and Hy. Subsequent mediation analyses were consistent with a pathway from dmPFC through PAG to Hy. These results suggest that medial frontal areas are more closely associated with core limbic activation than their lateral counterparts, and that dmPFC may play a particularly important role in the cognitive generation of emotional states.

Optimal set of EEG features for emotional state classification and trajectory visualization in Parkinson's disease

“…This is an agreement with other studies that there is decrease in brain's complexity during emotion processing due to the dysfunction in the neural circuits (Adolphs et al, 1996;Lawrence et al, 2007). Recent evidence points to neuropathological changes in PD in many brain areas which are assumed to play key roles in emotion processing (Kober et al, 2008). These include limbic structures such as the amygdala, and the ventral striatum, which is centrally located within the basal ganglia's Emotional state classification in PD 26 limbic loop.…”

Hidden sources of joy, fear, and sadness: Explicit versus implicit neural processing of musical emotions

“…This area has consistently been associated with emotion processing (Kober et al, 2008;Lindquist et al, 2012;Phan et al, 2002;Vytal & Hamann, 2010), also in the music domain (Khalfa et al, 2005). The cluster overlapped bilaterally with a cluster found by Williams et al (2006) during the explicit processing of fearful faces.…”

A survey of affective brain computer interfaces: principles, state-of-the-art, and challenges

“…Metaanalyses of fMRI studies of emotion have indeed shown the involvement of large brain networks related to perceptual, motor, or cognitive processes. [40,41] Barrett et al [31] outline the most prominent structures that have been identified as central during the evaluation of the emotional significance of stimulus events and the processes that lead to the emergence of the emotional experience. The core of the system involved in the translation of external and internal events to the affective state is a set of neural structures in the ventral portion of the brain: medial temporal lobe (including the amygdala, insula, and striatum), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC).…”