The Functional Anatomy of Innate and Acquired Fear: Perspectives from Neuroimaging

Abstract

Abstract Understanding the neurobiology of emotion has historically depended on studies carried out in animals or the careful documentation of patients with brain lesions that result in disorders of emotional behavior. These approaches are ultimately limited. Animal models, although informative, cannot provide adequate descriptions of phenomena as complex as human emotion whose differentiation depends on conscious experience. Likewise, inferences from patients with discrete brain insults are constrained either by the fact that lesions are seldom restricted to a single anatomical locus or their functional effects are unlikely to be bounded by anatomical locus. Physiological measures of in vivo human brain function, derived from positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), are now standard tools in cognitive neuroscience. Their ability to study the intact human brain gives them special appeal in cognitive science in general but even more so when applied in studies of human emotion where the database remains inadequate.