Social cognition, the amygdala, and autism

Ralph Adolphs
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

Social cognition encompasses a range of processes, from social attention to face perception to 
“theory of mind”.  Our work at Caltech attempts to understand the neural systems behind these 
processes by making comparisons:  across the different processes, across methods, across clinical 
populations, and even across species.  My talk will focus on the role of the amygdala, and will 
cover neuroimaging, lesion and single-unit electrophysiological studies.  I will argue that the 
amygdala flexibly represents stimulus saliency and serves a fundamentally attentional role that is 
dysfunctional in autism spectrum disorder.