Amygdala neural activity reflects spatial attention towards stimuli promising reward or threatening punishment

  1. Christopher J Peck
  2. C Daniel Salzman  Is a corresponding author
  1. Columbia University, United States

Abstract

Humans and other animals routinely identify and attend to sensory stimuli so as to rapidly acquire rewards or avoid aversive experiences. Emotional arousal, a process mediated by the amygdala, can enhance attention to stimuli in a non-spatial manner. However, amygdala neural activity was recently shown to encode spatial information about reward-predictive stimuli, and to correlate with spatial attention allocation. If representing the motivational significance of sensory stimuli within a spatial framework reflects a general principle of amygdala function, then spatially selective neural responses should also be elicited by sensory stimuli threatening aversive events. Recordings from amygdala neurons were therefore obtained while monkeys directed spatial attention towards stimuli promising reward or threatening punishment. Neural responses encoded spatial information similarly for stimuli associated with both valences of reinforcement, and responses reflected spatial attention allocation. The amygdala therefore may act to enhance spatial attention to sensory stimuli associated with rewarding or aversive experiences.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Christopher J Peck

    Columbia University, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. C Daniel Salzman

    Columbia University, New York, United States
    For correspondence
    cds2005@columbia.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Ranulfo Romo, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures complied with the National Institutes of Health guidelines and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University (protocols 1230 and AAAE4850, respectively).

Version history

  1. Received: August 23, 2014
  2. Accepted: October 28, 2014
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: October 30, 2014 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: November 20, 2014 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2014, Peck & Salzman

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Christopher J Peck
  2. C Daniel Salzman
(2014)
Amygdala neural activity reflects spatial attention towards stimuli promising reward or threatening punishment
eLife 3:e04478.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04478

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04478

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