The Amygdala and the Prefrontal Cortex: The Co-construction of Intelligent Decision-Making

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.