The amygdala and the prefrontal cortex: The co-construction of intelligent decision-making.

Abstract

A revised view of the amygdala, its relationship with the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and its role in intelligent human decision-making is proposed. Based on recent findings, we present a framework in which the amygdala plays a central role in the value computations that determine which goals are worth pursuing, while the PFC plays a central role in generating and evaluating possible action plans to realize these goals. We suggest that the amygdala and PFC continuously work together during decision-making and goal pursuit as individuals compute and recompute the value and likelihood of different goals while interacting with a dynamic world. Once seen as chiefly involved in simple stimulus-outcome associative learning, the amygdala is shown to play a sophisticated role in human decision-making by contributing to the moment-by-moment integration of multiple costs and benefits to determine optimal choices. We discuss implications of the framework for brain development, emotion regulation, intelligence, and psychopathology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).