Is the Human Amygdala Specialized for Processing Social Information?

Abstract

A number of studies in humans and other animals has confirmed the amygdala's role in modulating cognition and behavior on the basis of a stimulus' motivational, emotional, and social atttributes. This raises the question of how these attributes are related: is social information processing reducible to motivational processing? Some recent data suggest the possibility that the amygdala's primitive function may be motivational processing that is domain‐general, but that its function in primates, and especially humans, may have evolved to process social information specifically. While the issue is unresolved, future experiments could provide additional support.