Personal space regulation by the human amygdala

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Abstract
The amygdala is critical for processing information about emotion, but little is known about what role it might play in human behavioral interactions. Here the authors report that a patient with complete bilateral amydala lesions lacks any sense of personal space, and that in healthy controls the amygdala is activated by close personal proximity. The amygdala plays key roles in emotion and social cognition, but how this translates to face-to-face interactions involving real people remains unknown. We found that an individual with complete amygdala lesions lacked any sense of personal space. Furthermore, healthy individuals showed amygdala activation upon close personal proximity. The amygdala may be required to trigger the strong emotional reactions normally following personal space violations, thus regulating interpersonal distance in humans.