[Relationship between the amygdala activity and emotion/stress responses as revealed by fMRI and genetic analysis]

Abstract

Although modern society is full of stress, we do not yet know how socio-psychological stress is processed in the human brain. Experimental studies suggested that interaction of emotion and stress vulnerability may cause psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety. Elucidating this mechanism is one of the important topics in neuroscience. Animal experiments have shown that neural interaction between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex is involved in emotion and aversive conditioning. In the human subjects, functional magnetic resonance imaging is a powerful tool to investigate emotional processing in the brain. In this paper, the author presents the results of several fMRI experiments conducted in our laboratory as well as a review of the previous literature. The relationship between the amygdala activity and emotion/stress responses is investigated by means of neuroimaging and genetic analysis of neurotransmitters.