HSRP-310

Human amygdala responses to visual threat begin at approximately 74 ms, preceding visual cortex and selective to low spatial frequency; replicated at 88 ms for backward-masked stimuli outside conscious report. Behavioural threat judgement is possible from backward-masked faces at 39 ms. SUPERSEDES the widely circulated figure of 12 ms, which derives from auditory fear conditioning in RATS (LeDoux 1996; Quirk, Repa & LeDoux 1995) and is not a human value, nor a visual one. COUNTER-EVIDENCE AND SCOPE: the subcortical-route model is contested. Pessoa and Adolphs propose a "many roads" account and note that a visual equivalent of the rodent auditory pathway in humans is assumed rather than demonstrated. The human auditory low road itself remains newly mapped. Both human studies used epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes, who are not neurologically typical; this is the only way to obtain these latencies in humans and the constraint should be stated. All measurements used fearful FACES, not conceptual or ideological threat — the framework's extension to belief-threat is inference, not measurement. The claim that survives without the route: affective appraisal precedes deliberative evaluation. That is not in dispute.

Proof page — generated from the HSRP research notes register. Where a block has no data, it says so.

1. Header

Number
HSRP-310
Category
Neuroscience
Grade
ESTABLISHED
Status
AMENDED
Entry form
Full
First entered
Not recorded — added to the register in supplement 004
Last revised
Not recorded
Register entry
https://worldfreedomcore.com/hsrp-research-notes#HSRP-310

2. The claim, in full

Human amygdala responses to visual threat begin at approximately 74 ms, preceding visual cortex and selective to low spatial frequency; replicated at 88 ms for backward-masked stimuli outside conscious report. Behavioural threat judgement is possible from backward-masked faces at 39 ms. SUPERSEDES the widely circulated figure of 12 ms, which derives from auditory fear conditioning in RATS (LeDoux 1996; Quirk, Repa & LeDoux 1995) and is not a human value, nor a visual one. COUNTER-EVIDENCE AND SCOPE: the subcortical-route model is contested. Pessoa and Adolphs propose a "many roads" account and note that a visual equivalent of the rodent auditory pathway in humans is assumed rather than demonstrated. The human auditory low road itself remains newly mapped. Both human studies used epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes, who are not neurologically typical; this is the only way to obtain these latencies in humans and the constraint should be stated. All measurements used fearful FACES, not conceptual or ideological threat — the framework's extension to belief-threat is inference, not measurement. The claim that survives without the route: affective appraisal precedes deliberative evaluation. That is not in dispute.

3. What it rests on

No confidence intervals are recorded for any figure in this block.

4. Sources

5. Counter-evidence

6. Why this grade

Direct intracranial recording in humans, not inference from rodent work and not reconstruction from scalp EEG. Two independent studies, two latencies, two stimulus conditions — one of them unconscious presentation.

The spatial-frequency selectivity is what raises this above a timing observation. A fast response alone would be consistent with several routes. Low-spatial-frequency selectivity is a positive prediction of the magnocellular subcortical pathway specifically, and it was confirmed.

The social-threat tuning matters for the framework's use of this finding: identity-protective cognition is triggered by challenges to standing within a group, not by danger in general. The route is tuned to exactly that class of stimulus.

Held at ESTABLISHED for the human precedence finding. The specific anatomical route remains CONTESTED and is graded separately.

The register defines ESTABLISHED as: Supported directly by primary texts or published findings.

7. Correction history

No correction events are recorded. The entry's status is AMENDED.

8. Related observations

9. Where this appears on the site

Content pages that cite this observation inline:

Pages citing a source this observation rests on: /collapse-of-nations, /entheogens, /historic-warnings, /neuroscience, /psycho-vulgarism.

10. Open questions

What would strengthen it
recording during identity-threatening stimuli rather than face-threat; a non-clinical population, which current methods do not permit; measurement of the interval between amygdala onset and reported subjective certainty.
What would falsify it
demonstration that the 74 ms response is a volume-conducted artefact of nearby cortical activity; failure to replicate the spatial-frequency selectivity in an independent sample.

11. Machine block

The register record this page was generated from, with the derived fields added:

{
  "grade": "ESTABLISHED",
  "status": "AMENDED",
  "category": "NEU",
  "title": "Human amygdala responses to visual threat begin at approximately 74 ms, preceding visual cortex and selective to low spatial frequency; replicated at 88 ms for backward-masked stimuli outside conscious report. Behavioural threat judgement is possible from backward-masked faces at 39 ms. SUPERSEDES the widely circulated figure of 12 ms, which derives from auditory fear conditioning in RATS (LeDoux 1996; Quirk, Repa & LeDoux 1995) and is not a human value, nor a visual one. COUNTER-EVIDENCE AND SCOPE: the subcortical-route model is contested. Pessoa and Adolphs propose a \"many roads\" account and note that a visual equivalent of the rodent auditory pathway in humans is assumed rather than demonstrated. The human auditory low road itself remains newly mapped. Both human studies used epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes, who are not neurologically typical; this is the only way to obtain these latencies in humans and the constraint should be stated. All measurements used fearful FACES, not conceptual or ideological threat — the framework's extension to belief-threat is inference, not measurement. The claim that survives without the route: affective appraisal precedes deliberative evaluation. That is not in dispute.",
  "entry_form": "full",
  "note": null,
  "n": 310,
  "ref": "HSRP-310",
  "cited_by": [
    "SRC-428",
    "SRC-429",
    "SRC-430",
    "SRC-431",
    "SRC-550"
  ],
  "category_name": "Neuroscience",
  "supplement": "004",
  "evidence": [
    {
      "statement": "Mendez-Bertolo, Moratti, Toledano, Lopez-Sosa, Martinez-Alvarez, Mah, Vuilleumier, Gil-Nagel & Strange, \"A fast pathway for fear in human amygdala,\" Nature Neuroscience 19:1041-1049 (2016).",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-429"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Intracranial depth electrodes in eleven epilepsy patients. Amygdala responses began 74 ms after stimulus onset to fearful faces — but not to neutral or happy faces — at considerably shorter latency than fear responses recorded in visual cortex.",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-429"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Two features confirm the route rather than merely the timing. The fast responses appeared only for low spatial frequency components, exactly as a magnocellular subcortical pathway predicts. And they were not evoked by arousing scenes generally: the route is tuned to socially relevant threat, not to danger in the abstract.",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-429"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Time-frequency analysis in the second study below located a low-gamma signature from as early as 45 ms (J. Neuroscience 43:1405, 2023).",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-430"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Second study, independent: an amygdala potential beginning 88 ms post-stimulus, preferentially evoked by fearful faces rendered invisible by backward masking, again low-spatial-frequency selective (J. Neuroscience 43:1405, 2023). The amygdala discriminated threat in stimuli the subject could not consciously perceive.",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-430"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Rodent antecedent, correctly labelled: Quirk, Repa & LeDoux, Neuron 15:1029-1039 (1995). 74 single units across 24 freely behaving rats; conditioning effects concentrated in response components arriving under 15 ms, too early to have passed through cortex given the same laboratory's stimulation data showing cortical activation of the amygdala could not occur under 20 ms. These are rodent auditory values and are not human figures.",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-428"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "counter_evidence": [
    {
      "statement": "Pessoa & Adolphs, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11:773-783 (2010) argued from physiological data that the subcortical route does not process threats faster than the cortical one, proposing a \"multiple waves\" model. de Gelder, van Honk & Tamietto replied in the same journal (2011) defending the subcortical account. The 2016 intracranial data postdates and addresses the challenge directly.",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-431",
        "SRC-429"
      ]
    },
    {
      "statement": "Latency estimates remain heterogeneous across methods. MEG studies commonly report sub-100 ms amygdala responses; several single-neuron and intracranial studies in humans and monkeys report latencies beyond 100 ms.",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "statement": "Sample constraint: eleven patients, all with epilepsy, all with electrodes placed for clinical rather than research reasons. Electrode placement is not experimenter-controlled and the population is not neurologically typical.",
      "sources": [
        "SRC-429"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "grade_rationale": [
    "Direct intracranial recording in humans, not inference from rodent work and not reconstruction from scalp EEG. Two independent studies, two latencies, two stimulus conditions — one of them unconscious presentation.",
    "The spatial-frequency selectivity is what raises this above a timing observation. A fast response alone would be consistent with several routes. Low-spatial-frequency selectivity is a positive prediction of the magnocellular subcortical pathway specifically, and it was confirmed.",
    "The social-threat tuning matters for the framework's use of this finding: identity-protective cognition is triggered by challenges to standing within a group, not by danger in general. The route is tuned to exactly that class of stimulus.",
    "Held at ESTABLISHED for the human precedence finding. The specific anatomical route remains CONTESTED and is graded separately."
  ],
  "open_questions": {
    "strengthen": [
      "recording during identity-threatening stimuli rather than face-threat; a non-clinical population, which current methods do not permit; measurement of the interval between amygdala onset and reported subjective certainty."
    ],
    "falsify": [
      "demonstration that the 74 ms response is a volume-conducted artefact of nearby cortical activity; failure to replicate the spatial-frequency selectivity in an independent sample."
    ]
  },
  "related": [
    "HSRP-020"
  ],
  "appearances": [
    "/entheogens",
    "/historic-warnings"
  ],
  "missing_fields": [
    "entered",
    "revised",
    "intervals",
    "pinpoint for SRC-428",
    "pinpoint for SRC-429",
    "pinpoint for SRC-430",
    "pinpoint for SRC-431",
    "pinpoint for SRC-550",
    "source for an authored item",
    "history",
    "relation to HSRP-020"
  ]
}
https://worldfreedomcore.com/hsrp-research-notes.json

Generated from hsrp-research-notes.json (register generated 2026-09-19). Nothing on this page is written by hand. 11 fields not yet recorded.

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