The influence of affective state on exogenous attention to emotional distractors: Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates

The interplay between exogenous attention to emotional distractors and the baseline affective state has not been well established yet. The present study aimed to explore this issue through behavioral measures and event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants (N = 30) completed a digit categorization task depicted over negative, positive or neutral distractor background pictures, while they experienced negative, positive and neutral affective states elicited by movie scenes. Behavioral results showed higher error rates and longer reaction times for negative distractors than for neutral and positive ones, irrespective of the current emotional state. Neural indices showed that the participants' affective state modulated N1 amplitudes, irrespective of distractor type, while the emotional charge of distractors modulated N2, irrespective of the emotional state. Importantly, an interaction of state and distractor type was observed in LPP. These results demonstrate that exogenous attention to emotional distractors is independent from modulating effects of the emotional baseline state at early, automatic stages of processing. However, attention to emotional distractors and affective state interact at later latencies.Tis work was supported by the grants PSI2014-54853-P from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain), CAM S2015/HUM-3327 from the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), and ID-88 012/2014 from the Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científca (Uruguay

EmoMadrid: An emotional pictures database for affect research

Emotional scenes are, along with facial expressions, the most employed stimuli in Affective Sciences. However, as compared to facial expressions, available emotional scene databases are scarce and, in some cases, obsolete and overused. This paper describes EmoMadrid, an open access database currently consisting of 817 emotional pictures. Valence and Arousal of each of these pictures were assessed by an average sample of 146 volunteers, who evaluated an average of 155 pictures. The total sample participating in EmoMadrid evaluation up to the present is 768 volunteers. EmoMadrid provides information not provided in other databases, on low order visual parameters such as spatial frequency, luminosity, and chromatic complexity; these parameters are of crucial interest, since they have been revealed to interact with the affective content of pictures. EmoMadrid has already been employed in 14 Human Neuroscience and Behavior studies, despite it has only been described in its web pageThis work was supported by the FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (PGC2018-093570-B-I00) and by the Comunidad de Madrid (S2015/HUM-3327

Menstrual cycle and exogenous attention toward emotional expressions

Several studies suggest that the menstrual cycle affects emotional processing. However, these results may be biased by including women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) in the samples. PMS is characterized by negative emotional symptomatology, such as depression and/or anxiety, during the luteal phase. This study aimed to explore the modulation of exogenous attention to emotional facial expressions as a function of the menstrual cycle in women without PMS. For this purpose, 55 women were selected (from an original volunteer sample of 790) according to rigorous exclusion criteria. Happy, angry, and neutral faces were presented as distractors, while both behavioral performance in a perceptual task and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. This task was applied during both phases of the menstrual cycle (luteal and follicular, counterbalanced), and premenstrual symptomatology was monitored daily. Traditional and Bayesian ANOVAs on behavioral data (reaction times and errors in the task) and ERP indices (P1, N170, N2, and LPP amplitudes) confirmed the expected lack of an interaction of phase and emotion. Taken together, these results indicate that women free of PMS present steady exogenous attention levels to emotionally positive and negative stimuli regardless of the menstrual phaseThis research was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion ´ y Universidades of Spain (Grant no. PID2021-124420NB-100) and Comunidad de Madrid (Grants no. HUM19-HUM5705 and SI1-PJI-2019- 00011) in collaboration with the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Grant no. 2017-T2/SOC-5569

Fast unconscious processing of emotional stimuli in early stages of the visual cortex

Several cortical and subcortical brain areas have been reported to be sensitive to the emotional content of subliminal stimuli. However, the timing of these activations remains unclear. Our scope was to detect the earliest cortical traces of emotional unconscious processing of visual stimuli by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) from 43 participants. Subliminal spiders (emotional) and wheels (neutral), sharing similar low-level visual parameters, were presented at two different locations (fixation and periphery). The differential (peak-to-peak) amplitude from CP1 (77 ms from stimulus onset) to C2 (100 ms), two early visual ERP components originated in V1/V2 according to source localization analyses, was analyzed via Bayesian and traditional frequentist analyses. Spiders elicited greater CP1–C2 amplitudes than wheels when presented at fixation. This fast effect of subliminal stimulation—not reported previously to the best of our knowledge—has implications in several debates: 1) The amygdala cannot be mediating these effects, 2) latency of other evaluative structures recently proposed, such as the visual thalamus, is compatible with these results, 3) the absence of peripheral stimuli effects points to a relevant role of the parvocellular visual system in unconscious processingMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) (grant PGC2018-093570-B-I00) and the Comunidad de Madrid (grants HUM19-HUM5705 and, in collaboration with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, SI1-PJI-2019-00011 and 2017-T2/SOC-5569

Differential neural mechanisms underlying exogenous attention to peripheral and central distracters

Mechanisms underlying exogenous attention to central and peripheral distracters were temporally and spatially explored while 30 participants performed a digit categorization task. Neural (event-related potentials-ERPs-, analyzed both at the scalp and at the voxel level) and behavioral indices of exogenous attention were analyzed. Distracters were either biologically salient or neutral, in order to test whether the exogenous attention bias to the former observed in previous studies is independent of, or interacts with, distracter eccentricity. Two subcomponents of the N2 component of the ERPs, N2olp and N2ft, reflected processes related to peripheral distracters processing. N2olp effects, located in the dorsal attention network (supplementary motor area), were probably related to covert reorientation to peripheral distracters. N2ft effects, located in the default mode network (posterior cingulate cortex), appeared to reflect less effort in the ongoing task when peripheral distracters were presented. N2ft also showed a biological saliency effect which was independent of eccentricity and was located in the polar/ventral prefrontal cortex. P3 showed greater amplitudes to centrally presented distracters. These latter effects were located in TEO (visual cortex), and would be functionally associated with spatial interference between the target and central distracters. Behavior showed the relevance of both central and peripheral distracters in exogenous attention. These results indicate that exogenous attention to peripheral distracters differed in temporal and spatial terms from exogenous attention to central distracters and that it is biased towards biologically salient events irrespective of their eccentricityThis work was supported by the grants PSI2011-26314 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (MINECO) and CEMU-2012-004 from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. MINECO also supports Jacobo Albert through a Juan de la Cierva contract (JCI-2010-07766

Exogenous Attention to Emotional Stimuli Presenting Realistic (3D) Looming Motion

Previous research shows that dynamic stimuli, on the one hand, and emotional stimuli, on the other, capture exogenous attention due to their biological relevance. Through neural (ERPs) and behavioral measures (reaction times and errors), the present study explored the combined effect of looming motion and emotional content on attentional capture. To this end, 3D-recreated static and dynamic animals assessed as emotional (positive or negative) or neutral were presented as distractors while 71 volunteers performed a line orientation task. We observed a two-phase effect: firstly (before 300 ms), early components of ERPs (P1p and N2po) showed enhanced exogenous attentional capture by looming positive distractors and static threatening animals. Thereafter, dynamic and static threatening distractors received enhanced endogenous attention as revealed by both late ERP activity (LPC) and behavioral (errors) responses. These effects are likely explained by both the emotional valence and the distance of the stimulus at each momentOpen Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain (MICINN) [Grant Number PGC2018-093570-B-I00], and from the Comunidad de Madrid [Grant Number HUM19-HUM5705

Exogenous attention to facial vs non-facial emotional visual stimuli

The capacity of the two types of non-symbolic emotional stimuli most widely used in research on affective processes, faces and (non-facial) emotional scenes, to capture exogenous attention, was compared. Negative, positive and neutral faces and affective scenes were presented as distracters to 34 participants while they carried out a demanding digit categorization task. Behavioral (reaction times and number of errors) and electrophysiological (event-related potentialsERPs) indices of exogenous attention were analyzed. Globally, facial expressions and emotional scenes showed similar capabilities to attract exogenous attention. Electrophysiologically, attentional capture was reflected in the P2a component of ERPs at the scalp level, and in left precentral areas at the source level. Negatively charged faces and scenes elicited maximal P2a/precentral gyrus activity. In the case of scenes, this negativity bias was also evident at the behavioral level. Additionally, a specific effect of facial distracters was observed in N170 at the scalp level, and in the fusiform gyrus and inferior parietal lobule at the source level. This effect revealed maximal attention to positive expressions. This facial positivity offset was also observed at the behavioral level. Taken together, the present results indicate that faces and non-facial scenes elicit partially different and, to some extent, complementary exogenous attention mechanismsThis work was supported by the grants PSI2008-03688, PSI2009-08607 and PSI2011-26314 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) of Spain. MINECO also supports Jacobo Albert through a Juan de la Cierva contract (JCI-2010-07766

Working memory of emotional stimuli: electrophysiological characterization

Memorizing emotional stimuli in a preferential way seems to be one of the adaptive strategies brought on by evolution for supporting survival. However, there is a lack of electrophysiological evidence on this bias in working memory. The present study analyzed the influence of emotion on the updating component of working memory. Behavioral and electrophysiological indices were measured from a 3-back task using negative, neutral, and positive faces. Electrophysiological data evidenced an emotional influence on the working memory sensitive P3 component, which presented larger amplitudes for negative matching faces compared to neutral ones. This effect originated in the superior parietal cortex, previously reported to be involved in N-back tasks. Additionally, P3 results showed a correlation with reaction times, where higher amplitudes were associated with faster responses for negative matching faces. These findings indicate that electrophysiological measures seem to be very suitable indices of the emotional influence on working memory

Haptic recognition memory following short-term visual deprivation: behavioral and neural correlates from ERPs and alpha band oscillations

In the current study, we investigated the effects of short-term visual deprivation (2 h) on a haptic recognition memory task with familiar objects. Behavioral data, as well as event-related potentials (ERPs) and induced event-related oscillations (EROs) were analyzed. At the behavioral level, deprived participants showed speeded reaction times to new stimuli. Analyses of ERPs indicated that starting from 1000 ms the recognition of old objects elicited enhanced positive amplitudes only for the visually deprived group. Visual deprivation also influenced EROs. In this sense, we observed reduced power in the lower-1 alpha band for the processing of new compared to old stimuli between 500 and 750 ms. Overall, our data showed improved haptic recognition memory after a short period of visual deprivation. These effects were thought to reflect a compensatory mechanism that might have developed as an adaptive strategy for dealing with the environment when visual information is not availableThis work was supported by grants PSI2015-68368-P (MINECO/ FEDER) and Ref. H2015/HUM-3327 from the Comunidad de Madri

Suppression of alpha-band power underlies exogenous attention to emotional distractors

Alpha-band oscillations (8–14 Hz) are essential for attention and perception processes by facilitating the selection of relevant information. Directing visuospatial endogenous (voluntary) attention to a given location consistently results in a power suppression of alpha activity over occipito-parietal areas contralateral to the attended visual field. In contrast, the neural oscillatory dynamics underlying the involuntary capture of attention, or exogenous attention, are currently under debate. By exploiting the inherent capacity of emotionally salient visual stimuli to capture attention, we aimed to investigate whether exogenous attention is characterized by either a reduction or an increase in alpha-band activity. Electroencephalographic activity was recorded while participants completed a Posner visuospatial cueing task, in which a lateralized image with either positive, negative, or neutral emotional content competed with a target stimulus presented in the opposite hemifield. Compared with trials with no distractors, alpha power was reduced over occipital regions contralateral to distracting images. This reduction of alpha activity turned out to be functionally relevant, as it correlated with impaired behavioral performance on the ongoing task and was enhanced for distractors with negative valence. Taken together, our results demonstrate that visuospatial exogenous attention is characterized by a suppression of alpha-band activity contralateral to distractor location, similar to the oscillatory underpinnings of endogenous attention. Further, these results highlight the key role of exogenous attention as an adaptive mechanism for the efficient detection of biologically salient stimuliComunidad Autónoma de Madrid and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Grant/Award Number: 2017-T2 /SOC5569/ SI1-PJI-2019-00011; Comunidad de Madrid, Grant/Award Number: SAPIENTIA-CM H2019/HUM-570; Ministerio de Ciencia Innovación y Universidades, Agencia Estatal de Investigación, and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, Grant/Award Number: PGC2018-093570-B-I00 and PGC2018-100682-B-I0