This literature review focuses on activation patterns of the amygdala and its role in assessing attentional threats, as well as the effects of the neuropeptide oxytocin on the amygdala. The amygdala plays an important role in evaluating human threats. In both humans and primates, identifying facial expressions and gaze direction is a necessary aspect of social behavior, and the amygdala plays an important role in this function (Boll, Gamer, Kalisch, & Buchel, 2011, p.299). . From a medical perspective, studying the amygdala would help understand the neurological basis of many behavioral disorders such as borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. These studies use new techniques combining face perception tasks based on functional MRI and eye tracking. More recent studies have involved more precise imaging to look at specific regions of the amygdala, rather than the amygdala as a whole. The amygdala is strongly influenced by fearful and angry faces, which stimulate a feeling of threat. The amygdala also shows differential activation by sex, which has considerable implications for tailoring medications for mood disorders in different sexes (Lischke et al., 2012, p. 1432). Amygdala activation and its role in attentional threat assessment. the amygdala in the evaluation of attentional threats, recent research attempts to answer certain questions: 1. Does activation of the amygdala depend on the center of attention? 2. What is the relationship between amygdala activation and gaze orientation? 3. How is threat assessed when viewing emotional faces with ambiguous gaze directions and focusing on a corresponding emotion...... middle of paper ......& Buchel, C. (2009). Amygdala activation predicts gaze toward fearful eyes. The Journal of Neuroscience, 29(28), 9123-9126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1883-09.2009Gamer, M., Schmitz, AK, Tittgemeyer, M., and Schilbach, L. (2013). The human amygdala drives reflexive orientation toward facial features. Current biology, 23(20), R917-R918. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.09.008Gamer, M., Zurowski, B., & Buchel, C. (2010). Different subregions of the amygdala mediate the valence- and attention-related effects of oxytocin in humans. PNAS, 107(20), 9400-9405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1000985107Lischke, A., Gamer, M., Berger, C., Grossmann, A., Hauenstein, K., Heinrichs, M., . . . Domes, G. (2012). Oxytocin increases amygdala reactivity to threatening scenes in women. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 37(9), 1431-1438. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.01.011