Emotions are expressed in the voice as well as on the face. As a first step to explore the question of their integration, we used a bimodal perception situation modelled after the McGurk paradigm, in which varying degrees of discordance can be created between the affects expressed in a face and in a tone of voice. Experiment 1 showed that subjects can effectively combine information from the two sources, in that identification of the emotion in the face is biased in (...) the direction of the simultaneously presented tone of voice. Experiment 2 showed that this effect occurs also under instructions to base the judgement exclusively on the face. Experiment 3 showed the reverse effect, a bias from the emotion in the face on judgement of the emotion in the voice. These results strongly suggest the existence of mandatory bidirectional links between affect detection structures in vision and audition. (shrink)

Substantial advances in our understanding of the neural bases of emotional processing have been made over the past decades. Overall, studies in humans and other animals highlight the key role of the amygdala in the detection and evaluation of stimuli with affective value. Nonetheless, contradictory findings have been reported, especially in terms of the exact role of this structure in the processing of different emotions, giving rise to different neural models of emotion. For instance, although the amygdala has traditionally been (...) considered as exclusively involved in fear (and possibly anger), more recent work suggests that it may be important for processing other types of emotions, and even nonemotional information. A review of the main findings in this field is presented here, together with some of the hypotheses that have been put forward to interpret this literature and explain its inconsistencies. (shrink)