ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2023
Rapid Processing of Invisible Fearful Faces in the Human Amygdala.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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27 citing papers in PubMed.
- An auditory "low road" for threat processing in humans sensitive to fast temporal cues.iScience · 2026Article
- Right amygdala ablation reduces maladaptive negative interpretation bias and symptoms in a patient with post-traumatic stress disorder.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Anxiety, stress, and affective modulation on object-location memory: A systematic review in virtual environments.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Emotions in motion: How fear and anger differently influence forward single-step initiation.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Multimodal EEG-MRI Neuroimaging in Schizophrenia-A Systematic and Mechanistic Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Preserved discrimination sensitivity to looming trajectories across parafoveal and peripheral vision.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Defining Acute Stress Reactions to support large scale combat operations.Military psychology : the official journal of the Division of Military Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Review
- Explicit and Implicit Emotion Processing: The Role of Spatial Frequencies in a Case Study of Right Capsulo-Thalamic Damage.Journal of Intelligence · 2026Article
- Acupuncture Modulates Neurotransmitter-Related Molecules in the Amygdala to Ameliorate Generalized Anxiety Disorder.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2026Article
- How do Faces Influence Behavior? A Proposal for Distinguishing between Mechanisms that Involve Cognitive inferences, Emotional Feelings, and Unconscious Affective Reactions.Affective science · 2026Review
- Unconscious Fear Requires Attention to Distort Vision in Safe Context.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Stronger Activation of the Right Primary Motor Cortex in the Early Processing Stage of Negative Emotional Scenes Stimulation.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Neural network dynamics associated with facial and subjective emotional responses.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Differential Modulation of Attention by Aversive Associative and Statistical Learning in Distinct Visual Search Modes.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Extrafoveal processing of happy face relies on visual awareness in hearing-impaired adults.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Real-life intense fear is communicated through context, not facial expressions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Effects of Closed Mouth vs. Exposed Teeth on Facial Expression Processing: An ERP Study.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Investigating the hemiretinal asymmetry in emotion processing as a function of spatial frequency.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Impairment of unconscious emotional processing after unilateral medial temporal structure resection.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Looming Angry Faces: Preliminary Evidence of Differential Electrophysiological Dynamics for Filtered Stimuli via Low and High Spatial Frequencies.Brain sciences · 2024Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Rapid detection of a threat or its symbol (e.g., fearful face), whether visible or invisible, is critical for human survival. This function is suggested to be enabled by a subcortical pathway to the amygdala independent of the cortex. However, conclusive electrophysiological evidence in humans is scarce. Here, we explored whether the amygdala can rapidly encode invisible fearful faces. We recorded intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) responses in the human (both sexes) amygdala to faces with fearful, happy, and neutral emotions rendered invisible by backward masking. We found that a short-latency intracranial event-related potential (iERP) in the amygdala, beginning 88 ms poststimulus onset, was preferentially evoked by invisible fearful faces relative to invisible happy or neutral faces. The rapid iERP exhibited selectivity to the low spatial frequency (LSF) component of the fearful faces. Time-frequency iEEG analyses further identified a rapid amygdala response preferentially for LSF fearful faces at the low gamma frequency band, beginning 45 ms poststimulus onset. In contrast, these rapid responses to invisible fearful faces were absent in cortical regions, including early visual areas, the fusiform gyrus, and the parahippocampal gyrus. These findings provide direct evidence for the existence of a subcortical pathway specific for rapid fear detection in the amygdala and demonstrate that the subcortical pathway can function without conscious awareness and under minimal influence from cortical areas.
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