Article

The amygdala, perhaps more than any other brain region, has been implicated in
numerous neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. It is part of a
system initially evolved to detect dangers in the environment and modulate
subsequent responses, which can profoundly influence human behavior. If its
threshold is set too low, normally benign aspects of the environment are
perceived as dangers, interactions are limited, and anxiety may arise. If set too
high, risk taking increases and inappropriate sociality may occur. Given that
many neurodevelopmental disorders involve too little or too much anxiety or too
little of too much social interaction, it is not surprising that the amygdala has
been implicated in many of them. In this chapter, we begin by providing a brief
overview of the phylogeny, ontogeny, and function of the amygdala and then
appraise data from neurodevelopmental disorders which suggest amygdala
dysregulation. We focus on neurodevelopmental disorders where there is evidence
of amygdala dysregulation from postmortem studies, structural MRI analyses or
functional MRI. However, the results are often disparate and it is not totally
clear whether this is due to inherent heterogeneity or differences in
methodology. Nonetheless, the amygdala is a common site for neuropathology in
neurodevelopmental disorders and is therefore a potential target for therapeutics to alleviate associated symptoms.
CI - Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Langue : ANGLAIS