Amygdala responses to facial expressions [Thomas KM et al, Biological Psychiatry, 15 February 2001, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 309-316(8)] “The amygdala plays a central role in the human response to affective or emotionally charged stimuli, particularly
fear-producing stimuli. We examined the specificity of the amygdala response to facial expressions in adults and
children (with fMRI)….Adults showed increased left amygdala activity for fearful
faces relative to neutral faces. This pattern was not observed in the children who showed greater amygdala activity with
neutral faces than with fearful faces. For the children,… boys but not
girls showed less activity with repeated exposure to the fearful faces.” [requires free registration]