We have advanced in understanding how rapid subcortical pathways may support auditory affective processing in humans. Our work has focused on three main scientific goals:
1) Anatomical characterisation of subcortical pathways: using advanced diffusion MRI and optimised tractography methods, we have identified direct connections between the thalamus and the amygdala and generated high-precision maps of distinct subcortical projections. These developments have enabled a level of anatomical detail and reliability not previously achieved for these structures.
2) Functional evidence for subcortical auditory threat processing: through behavioural testing, EEG, pupillometry and fMRI, we examined how humans respond to emotionally salient sounds. Across studies, we observed patterns suggesting that specific acoustic features elicit rapid neural and physiological responses, and that these responses relate to individual variability in subcortical connectivity.
3) Linking structure, function and emotional traits: measures of fearfulness, anxiety and related traits were collected throughout the experiments. Analyses point to associations between these traits and both structural and functional aspects of the pathways, offering new insight into mechanisms that may underlie affective processes and vulnerability.
In parallel, the project has generated new multimodal paradigms, analysis pipelines and datasets that will be released upon publication. Current work is expanding these findings to broader sets of sounds and sensory modalities, with the aim of building a more comprehensive understanding of how rapid subcortical circuits contribute to human emotion.
