The Emotional Gatekeeper: A Computational Model of Attentional Selection and Suppression through the Pathway from the Amygdala to the Inhibitory Thalamic Reticular Nucleus
Fig 6
Focused top-down attention on fear-related stimuli.
Axis and subplot labels are as in Fig 5. A, Plan map. B, Salience map for appetitive (positive) stimuli. C, Salience map for aversive (negative) stimuli. D, E, F, Sensory map, including sensory cortex (D), sensory TRN sector (E) and sensory thalamus (F). G, Input to sensory thalamus (stimuli and distractors). H, Reinforcement signals and Conditioned Stimuli (CSs). The simulations reveal that the amygdala-TRN projection can mediate both bottom-up (green arrows) and top-down (purple arrows) modulation of attention by emotion. During the second testing phase (to the right of the vertical dotted line) top-down bias is applied to the fear plan. This allows the fear plan (A–red plot) to overcome the effects of inhibition elicited by expectation violation (EV) and remain active (in this simulation M2 = 160 during the second testing phase). Top-down excitation of BA neurons (purple arrows) allows BA (C) to restrict sensory attention to the stimulus that was previously associated with an aversive stimulus: CS3. Attention to CS1 and CS2 is attenuated (D, F), despite the fact that they have been labeled as salient.