The human amygdala and orbital prefrontal cortex in behavioural regulation

Survival in complex environments depends on an ability to optimize future behaviour based on past experience. Learning from experience enables an organism to generate predictive expectancies regarding probable future states of the world, enabling deployment of flexible behavioural strategies. However, behavioural flexibility cannot rely on predictive expectancies alone and options for action need to be deployed in a manner that is responsive to a changing environment. Important moderators on learning-based predictions include those provided by context and inputs regarding an organism's current state, including its physiological state. In this paper, I consider human experimental approaches using functional magnetic resonance imaging that have addressed the role of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex (PFC), in particular the orbital PFC, in acquiring predictive information regarding the probable value of future events, updating this information, and shaping behaviour and decision processes on the basis of these value representations.