The roles of the amygdala in the affective regulation of body, brain, and behaviour

Abstract. Despite the great amount of knowledge produced by the neuroscientific literature affective phenomena, current models tackling noncognitive aspects of behavior are often bio-inspired but rarely bio-constrained. This paper presents a theoretical account of affective systems centered on the amygdala. This account aims to furnish a general framework and specific pathways to implement models that are more closely related to biological evidence. The amygdala, which receives input from brain areas encoding internal states, innately relevant stimuli, and innately neutral stimuli, plays a fundamental role in motivational and emotional processes of organisms. This role is based on the fact that amygdala implements the two associative processes at the core of Pavlovian learning (CS-US and CS-UR associations), and that it has the capacity of modulating these associations on the basis of internal states. These functionalities allow the amygdala to play an important role in the regulation ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: CONNECTION
• Authors: Marco Mirolli, Francesco Mannella, Gianluca Baldassarre
• Keywords: Affective, Amygdala, Computer Networks, CONNECTION 2010, Internal States