Automaticity and the amygdala:: Nonconscious responses to emotional faces

The human face is an evolved adaptation for social communication. This implies that humans are genetically prepared to produce facial gestures that are automatically decoded by observers. Psycho-physiological data demonstrate that humans respond automatically with their facial muscles, with autonomic responses, and with specific regional brain activation of the amygdala when exposed to, emotionally expressive faces. Attention is preferentially and automatically oriented toward facial threat. Neuropsychological data, as well as a rapidly expanding brain-imaging literature, implicate the amygdala is a central structure for responding to negative emotional faces, and particularly to tearful ones. However, the amygdala may not be specialized for processing emotional faces but may instead respond to faces because they provide important information for the appraisal that is its primary responsibility.