Studies in animals have shown that the amygdala receives highly processed visual input, contains neurons that respond selectively to faces, and that it participates in emotion and social behaviour. Although studies in epileptic patients support its role in emotion, determination of the amygdala's function in humans has been hampered by the rarity of patients with selective amygdala lesions. Here, with the help of one such rare patient, we report findings that suggest the human amygdala may be indispensable to: (1) recognize fear in facial expressions; (2) recognize multiple emotions in a single facial expression; but (3) is not required to recognize personal identity from faces. These results suggest that damage restricted to the amygdala causes very specific recognition impairments, and thus constrains the broad notion that the amygdala is involved in emotion.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 173. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 September 2026.
All research outputs
#294,905
of 34,365,356 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#15,201
of 117,563 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#94
of 109,140 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#2
of 210 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,365,356 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 117,563 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 96.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 109,140 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 210 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
