Neurons in the human amygdala selective for perceived emotion

Significance Primates have a dedicated system to process faces. Neuroimaging, lesion, and electrophysiological studies find that the amygdala processes facial emotions. Here we recorded 210 neurons from 7 neurosurgical patients and asked whether amygdala responses are driven primarily by properties of the stimulus or by the perceptual judgments of the perceiver. Our finding shows, for the first time to our knowledge, that neurons in the human amygdala encode the subjective judgment of emotions shown in face stimuli, rather than simply their stimulus features.