Explicit attention interferes with selective emotion processing in human extrastriate cortex

BACKGROUND: Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (~150–300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. RESULTS: Participants successfully performed the primary visual attention task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components (Selection Negativity and P3b). Replicating previous results, emotional modulation of the EPN was observed in a task condition with low processing demands. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant pictures failed to elicit increased EPN amplitudes compared to neutral images in more difficult explicit attention task conditions. Further analyses determined that even the processing of pleasant and unpleasant pictures high in emotional arousal is subject to interference in experimental conditions with high task demand. Taken together, performing demanding feature-based counting tasks interfered with differential emotion processing indexed by the EPN. CONCLUSION: The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon

Kortikale Verarbeitung von Essensbildern in Abhängigkeit von Nahrungsdeprivation

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersuchte den Einfluss des motivationalen Zustandes auf die Verarbeitung von Nahrungsreizen. Die Relevanz von Essensreizen ist zustandsabhängig und steigt im hungrigen Zustand. Diese Arbeit prüfte die Annahme, dass sich für Essensbilder spezifische Modulationen in der kortikalen Verarbeitung nach Nahrungsdeprivation beobachten lassen. In einer ersten Studie wurden Essensbilder in rascher Darbietungsweise gezeigt. Die Probanden wurden im Abstand einer Woche in balancierter Reihung satt und hungrig untersucht. Die ereigniskorrelierten Potentiale ergaben spezifische Veränderungen bei der Betrachtung von Essensbildern nach Deprivation im Zeitfenster zwischen 180 und 320 ms. Die Topographie der Differenz von hungrigem und sattem Zustand zeigte positive Differenzen über parietalen sowie negative Differenzen über temporo-okzipitalen Bereichen. Die Darstellungen potentieller Generatorstrukturen lieferten Hinweise auf eine verstärkte Verarbeitung in visuellen Kortexbereichen für Essensbilder im hungrigen Zustand. Diese Befunde sprachen für eine erleichterte Verarbeitung von Essensbildern nach Deprivation. In einer zweiten Studie wurden zusätzlich späte Potentialveränderungen untersucht. Diese späten Potentiale ergaben erhöhte Amplituden positiver Potentiale über posterioren Bereichen für Essensbilder im hungrigen Zustand. Die Quellenschätzungen zeigten, dass vor allem extrastriäre Bereiche im hungrigen Zustand verstärkt aktiv waren. Diese Ergebnisse können als Hinweis auf eine elaboriertere Verarbeitung zustandsrelevanter Essensbilder nach Nahrungsdeprivation verstanden werden. Eine verstärkte Verarbeitung von Nahrungsreizen im hungrigen Zustand kann im Sinne einer optimierten Exploration der Umgebung und Identifikation potentieller Nährstoffquellen als überlebensrelevanter Mechanismus der menschlichen Wahrnehmung verstanden werden.In two consecutive studies it was investigated whether food deprivation influences the cortical processing of food pictures. Participants viewed series of appetitive food and various control pictures in two sessions, one in satiated state and one after 24 hours of food deprivation. The pictures were shown in rapid continuous streams in pseudo-randomized order with a duration of 333 ms per picture in the first and 666 ms in the second study. Results revealed modulations in the event-related potential in early (180 - 320 ms) and late (450 - 600 ms) processing stages. Analyses of the control pictures revealed that the effects of deprivation were specific for the state-relevant category of food cues. The findings of the two studies provide evidence for the enhanced processing of food pictures when being food deprived. These alterations in cortical processing of relevant stimuli can be due to an evolutionary useful mechanism in order to optimize the search and identification of possible food sources

Affective prime and target picture processing : an ERP analysis of early and late interference effects

Viewing emotionally arousing compared to neutral pictures is associated with differential electrophysiological activity in early ("early posterior negativity", EPN), as well as later time-windows ("late positive potential", LPP). A previous study revealed that the EPN is reduced when the preceding prime picture was emotional. The present study explored whether sequential interference effects are specific for early processing stages or extend to later processing stages. Dense sensor ERPs were measured while subjects viewed a continuous stream of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures, presented for 660 ms each. Previous results were replicated in that emotional pictures were associated with enlarged EPN and LPP amplitudes compared to neutral pictures. Furthermore, the EPN to emotional and neutral pictures was reduced when preceded by pleasant prime pictures. The novel finding was that emotional compared to neutral prime pictures were associated with reduced LPP amplitudes to the subsequently presented picture irrespective of its emotional valence (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant). These results demonstrate sustained interference effects in serial picture presentations discussed within a framework of resource competition among successive pictures

Emotion and attention : Event-related brain potential studies

Emotional pictures guide selective visual attention. A series of event-related brain potential (ERP) studies is reviewed demonstrating the consistent and robust modulation of specific ERP components by emotional images. Specifically, pictures depicting natural pleasant and unpleasant scenes are associated with an increased early posterior negativity, late positive potential, and sustained positive slow wave compared with neutral contents. These modulations are considered to index different stages of stimulus processing including perceptual encoding, stimulus representation in working memory, and elaborate stimulus evaluation. Furthermore, the review includes a discussion of studies exploring the interaction of motivated attention with passive and active forms of attentional control. Recent research is reviewed exploring the selective processing of emotional cues as a function of stimulus novelty, emotional prime pictures, learned stimulus significance, and in the context of explicit attention tasks. It is concluded that ERP measures are useful to assess the emotion-attention interface at the level of distinct processing stages. Results are discussed within the context of two-stage models of stimulus perception brought out by studies of attention, orienting, and learning

Deprivation selectively modulates brain potentials to food pictures

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to examine whether the processing of food pictures is selectively modulated by changes in the motivational state of the observer. Sixteen healthy male volunteers were tested twice 1 week apart, either after 24 hr of food deprivation or after normal food intake. ERPs were measured while participants viewed appetitive food pictures as well as standard emotional and neutral control pictures. Results show that the ERPs to food pictures in a hungry, rather than satiated, state were associated with enlarged positive potentials over posterior sensor sites in a time window of 170-310 ms poststimulus. Minimum-norm analysis suggests the enhanced processing of food cues primarily in occipito-temporo-parietal regions. In contrast, processing of standard emotional and neutral pictures was not modulated by food deprivation. Considered from the perspective of motivated attention, the selective change of food cue processing may reflect a state-dependent change in stimulus salience

Rapport d'etude sur la place et le traitement de l'environnement dans les rapports d'activite de 200 grandes entreprises

Available at INIST (FR), Document Supply Service, under shelf-number : RP 185 (3120) / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueSIGLEFRFranc

Vegetarianism and food perception : selective visual attention to meat pictures

Vegetarianism provides a model system to examine the impact of negative affect towards meat, based on ideational reasoning. It was hypothesized that meat stimuli are efficient attention catchers in vegetarians. Event-related brain potential recordings served to index selective attention processes at the level of initial stimulus perception. Consistent with the hypothesis, late positive potentials to meat pictures were enlarged in vegetarians compared to omnivores. This effect was specific for meat pictures and obtained during passive viewing and an explicit attention task condition. These findings demonstrate the attention capture of food stimuli, deriving affective salience from ideational reasoning and symbolic meaning

The impact of hunger on food cue processing : An event-related brain potential study

The present study used event-related brain potentials to examine deprivation effects on visual attention to food stimuli at the level of distinct processing stages. Thirty-two healthy volunteers (16 females) were tested twice 1 week apart, either after 24 h of food deprivation or after normal food intake. Participants viewed a continuous stream of food and flower images while dense sensor ERPs were recorded. As revealed by distinct ERP modulations in relatively earlier and later time windows, deprivation affected the processing of food and flower pictures. Between 300 and 360 ms, food pictures were associated with enlarged occipito-temporal negativity and centro-parietal positivity in deprived compared to satiated state. Of main interest, in a later time window (~450 600 ms), deprivation increased amplitudes of the late positive potential elicited by food pictures. Conversely, flower processing varied by motivational state with decreased positive potentials in the deprived state. Minimum-Norm analyses provided further evidence that deprivation enhanced visual attention to food cues in later processing stages. From the perspective of motivated attention, hunger may induce a heightened state of attention for food stimuli in a processing stage related to stimulus recognition and focused attention

The facilitated processing of threatening faces : an ERP analysis

Threatening, friendly, and neutral faces were presented to test the hypothesis of the facilitated perceptual processing of threatening faces. Dense sensor event-related brain potentials were measured while subjects viewed facial stimuli. Subjects had no explicit task for emotional categorization of the faces. Assessing early perceptual stimulus processing, threatening faces elicited an early posterior negativity compared with nonthreatening neutral or friendly expressions. Moreover, at later stages of stimulus processing, facial threat also elicited augmented late positive potentials relative to the other facial expressions, indicating the more elaborate perceptual analysis of these stimuli. Taken together, these data demonstrate the facilitated perceptual processing of threatening faces. Results are discussed within the context of an evolved module of fear (A. Öhman & S. Mineka, 2001)

Stimulus novelty and emotion perception : the near absence of habituation in the visual cortex

In rapid serial visual presentation of pictures, an early event-related brain potential component shows enlarged negativity over occipital regions for emotional pictures compared with neutral pictures. The present study examined whether the processing of emotional target pictures varies as a function of stimulus repetition. Accordingly, pictures of erotica, neutral contents, and mutilations were repeatedly presented (90 times) while the electroencephalogram was recorded with a 129 dense sensor array. As in previous studies, emotional pictures were associated with a larger posterior negativity than neutral pictures. Furthermore, differential emotion processing did not vary as a function of stimulus repetition and was similarly expressed across blocks of picture presentation. These findings suggest the near absence of habituation in differential emotion processing during perceptual processing