ArticlePLoS computational biology2016
The Emotional Gatekeeper: A Computational Model of Attentional Selection and Suppression through the Pathway from the Amygdala to the Inhibitory Thalamic Reticular Nucleus.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Self-Relevance Attenuates Emotion-Induced Blindness Across Individual, Relational, and Collective Levels.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Specializations in Amygdalar and Hippocampal Innervation of the Primate Nucleus Accumbens Shell.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- A model of thalamo-cortical interaction for incremental binding in mental contour-tracing.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Inhibition of thalamic relay nuclei scales the aperiodic and alpha band oscillations associated with arousal during naturalistic stimulus viewing.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Neural network modeling of psychoanalytic concepts.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2025Article
- Post-stroke sensory hypersensitivity: insights from lesion-symptom and disconnection mapping.Brain communications · 2025Article
- Thalamocortical mGlu8 Modulates Dorsal Thalamus Excitatory Transmission and Sensorimotor Activity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Review
- Remembrance of things perceived: Adding thalamocortical function to artificial neural networks.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2023Review
- Sleep spindles in primates: Modeling the effects of distinct laminar thalamocortical connectivity in core, matrix, and reticular thalamic circuits.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2023Article
- Pathways for Memory, Cognition and Emotional Context: Hippocampal, Subgenual Area 25, and Amygdalar Axons Show Unique Interactions in the Primate Thalamic Reuniens Nucleus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Temporal dynamics of affect in the brain: Evidence from human imaging and animal models.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Review
- The prefrontal cortex, pathological anxiety, and anxiety disorders.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Review
- Sensory over-responsivity is related to GABAergic inhibition in thalamocortical circuits.Translational psychiatry · 2021Article
- Dynamic Transitions of Epilepsy Waveforms Induced by Astrocyte Dysfunction and Electrical Stimulation.Neural plasticity · 2020Article
- Stability or Plasticity? - A Hierarchical Allostatic Regulation Model of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Function for Social Valuation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Article
- Occipital Magnocellular VEP Non-linearities Show a Short Latency Interaction Between Contrast and Facial Emotion.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Low-intensity repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over prefrontal cortex in an animal model alters activity in the auditory thalamus but does not affect behavioural measures of tinnitus.Experimental brain research · 2019Article
- Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
In a complex environment that contains both opportunities and threats, it is important for an organism to flexibly direct attention based on current events and prior plans. The amygdala, the hub of the brain's emotional system, is involved in forming and signaling affective associations between stimuli and their consequences. The inhibitory thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) is a hub of the attentional system that gates thalamo-cortical signaling. In the primate brain, a recently discovered pathway from the amygdala sends robust projections to TRN. Here we used computational modeling to demonstrate how the amygdala-TRN pathway, embedded in a wider neural circuit, can mediate selective attention guided by emotions. Our Emotional Gatekeeper model demonstrates how this circuit enables focused top-down, and flexible bottom-up, allocation of attention. The model suggests that the amygdala-TRN projection can serve as a unique mechanism for emotion-guided selection of signals sent to cortex for further processing. This inhibitory selection mechanism can mediate a powerful affective 'framing' effect that may lead to biased decision-making in highly charged emotional situations. The model also supports the idea that the amygdala can serve as a relevance detection system. Further, the model demonstrates how abnormal top-down drive and dysregulated local inhibition in the amygdala and in the cortex can contribute to the attentional symptoms that accompany several neuropsychiatric disorders.
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