Figure 3.

Negative emotionality (fearful vs. neutral) in the amygdala as the function of neutral and fearful face processing. A. The amygdala reactivity to explicitly perceived emotionality (fearful vs. neutral) was positively correlated with the response to fearful faces (r = 0.49, P = 0.006) but negatively correlated with the response to neutral faces (r = −0.73, P < 0.001). Fisher r‐to‐z transformation confirmed that both of the response to fearful faces and neutral faces independently contributed to explicitly perceived emotionality (Δz = 5.38, P < 0.01). During the explicit processing of emotionally undefined stimuli, higher level of negative emotionality (fearful vs. neutral faces) was coupled with lower activation to neutral faces but higher activation to fearful faces. B. Conversely, the amygdala reactivity to implicitly perceived emotionality (fearful vs. neutral) was only negatively correlated with the response to neutral faces (r = −0.47, P = 0.008), but was not correlated with the response to fearful faces (r = −0.18, P = 0.33). Fisher r‐to‐z transformation indicated that the correlation coefficients between the response to neutral and fearful faces were not significantly different during implicitly perceived emotionality (Δz = 1.21, P = 0.23). During the implicit processing of emotionally undefined stimuli, higher level of negative emotionality (fearful vs. neutral faces) was coupled with lower activation to neutral faces.