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. 2009 Dec 10:10:145.
doi: 10.1186/1471-2202-10-145.

Amygdala temporal dynamics: temperamental differences in the timing of amygdala response to familiar and novel faces

Jennifer U Blackford  1 , Suzanne N Avery, Richard C Shelton, David H Zald
Affiliations

Amygdala temporal dynamics: temperamental differences in the timing of amygdala response to familiar and novel faces

Jennifer U Blackford et al. BMC Neurosci. .

Abstract

Background: Inhibited temperament - the predisposition to respond to new people, places or things with wariness or avoidance behaviors - is associated with increased risk for social anxiety disorder and major depression. Although the magnitude of the amygdala's response to novelty has been identified as a neural substrate of inhibited temperament, there may also be differences in temporal dynamics (latency, duration, and peak). We hypothesized that persons with inhibited temperament would have faster responses to novel relative to familiar neutral faces compared to persons with uninhibited temperament. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the temporal dynamics of the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response to both novel and familiar neutral faces in participants with inhibited or uninhibited temperament.

Results: Inhibited participants had faster amygdala responses to novel compared with familiar faces, and both longer and greater amygdala response to all faces. There were no differences in peak response.

Conclusion: Faster amygdala response to novelty may reflect a computational bias that leads to greater neophobic responses and represents a mechanism for the development of social anxiety.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Inhibited participants respond more quickly to novel compared to familiar faces. Fitted time courses for left and right amygdala by temperament group (inhibited/uninhibited) and face type (novel/familiar) illustrate differences in temporal dynamics. Inhibited participants had a faster amygdala response to novel relative to familiar faces in the left and right amygdala (onset marked by arrows). The duration of the amygdala response (marked by horizontal lines) to both novel and familiar faces was longer in the inhibited group. Peak response (indicated by x) failed to differ significantly between groups.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Inhibited participants have greater magnitude of amygdala response to faces. Dot plots of mean percent signal change to all faces (novel and familiar) for the inhibited and uninhibited temperament groups. The difference in magnitude of amygdala response between groups was significant in the right amygdala (p = .02).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Inhibited participants show greater BOLD signal to novel faces in cerebellum. When viewing novel compared to familiar faces, persons with inhibited temperament demonstrated significantly stronger BOLD signal in the right cerebellum (Crus I, lobule VI). Activation maps are superimposed on sagittal (left image) and axial (right image) sections of a single standard brain image (MNI canonical T1 image). Maps are thresholded at voxel p < .005 and contiguous cluster size > 40, with the color bar representing t-values.
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