Emotion-related brain regions.

Converging data from human functional imaging in healthy subjects, neuropsychological studies of brain-damaged patients, and non-human neurophysiology indicate that emotional processing is linked to anatomically distinct and well-defined brain regions. A main characteristic of emotion-related brain regions (orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulated cortex, amygdala, insula) is their reciprocal anatomical connectivity with each other as well as with neuromodulatory systems (e.g., serotonergic dorsal raphe, cholinergic nucleus basalis of Meynert, and dopaminergic ventral tegmentum) and with other brain areas involved in sensory, motor, and cognitive functions. These structures mediate the representation of stimulus values, the affect-leaden enhancement of sensory processing, and the predictions of values associated with actions in order to bias decision-making in uncertain situations. In this review, we discuss new results from the functional neuroanatomy of these brain circuits and outline their significance in the emergence of various psychopathological phenomena.