fMRI of the Human Amygdala using Ultra-High Field MRI. Parcellation of Emotional Human Non-Linguistic Sounds

Eugenia Solano-Castiella¹, Bibek Dhital¹, Domenica Wilfling¹, Tom Fritz¹, Erik Trke¹, Enrico Reimer¹, Robert Trampel¹, Robert Turner¹

Localization within the body of the amygdala of representations of specific emotions has been little studied. The fMRI spatial resolution commonly available with 3T is prone to susceptibility artifact, and has insufficient spatial precision to distinguish different emotion-related activations. We performed high resolution fMRI at 7T MRI using a 24-channel RF receive coil, with a range of auditory nonverbal emotional human vocalizations. Probabilistic amygdala parcellations, obtained in-vivo, assisted localization of emotions within the amygdala. Use of 7T fMRI and such amygdala maps enables correlation of the functional organization of emotion representation with its anatomical substrate.