The Representation of Valence by Visual Category in the Orbitofrontal Cortex and Amygdala
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v12i4.5778Keywords:
valence, categorical representation, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdalaAbstract
Emotion is critical for survival in all animals. Even in modern humans, processing emotion holds significant adaptive value. In neuroscientific investigations of emotion, both the amygdala, part of the evolutionarily primitive limbic system, and the orbitofrontal cortex, part of the evolutionarily newer cortical system, have been highly implicated in the representation of valence, a major emotional component. Although the strict divide between the limbic system and the cortical system in brain function has been rejected, the underlying notions of theories of brain evolution lead to the hypothesis that the amygdala is advantageous in processing evolutionarily older adaptive value whereas the orbitofrontal cortex is advantageous in processing evolutionarily newer adaptive value. In this study, this hypothesis is tested using a functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset in which human participants made valence judgments on natural items and scenes (i.e., evolutionarily old with greater immediate adaptive value) and man-made items and scenes (i.e., evolutionarily new with lesser immediate adaptive value). The results show that the amygdala represents valence of natural but not man-made scenes, consistent with the hypothesis. The orbitofrontal cortex, in contrast, represents valence of both natural and man-made scenes, partially consistent with the hypothesis. The findings illustrate how visual categories defined by adaptive value shape the neural representation of valence in the contrasting limbic and cortical systems.
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