ABSTRACT
Responsiveness of the human amygdala to facial expressions of fear has been found in neuropsychological and functional imaging studies, and is now considered a well-established finding. Much less is known about the cues involved in the amygdala's response to fear. Facial expressions involve patterns of muscle movements that lead to changes in feature shape that can often be particularly easily seen in one part of the face, though they usually lead to identifiable changes across more than one of the internal facial features. Recent studies involving functional brain imaging and neuropsychology have underlined the importance of the eye region to the amygdala's responses to fearful faces. The amygdala is involved more generally in processing information from the eye region. If the amygdala responds only to information from the eye region, then there will be no difference in blood flow between the fearful and neutral faces with masked eye region.
