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

Effects of dopaminergic modulation on electrophysiological brain response to affective stimuli

Introduction: Several theoretical accounts of the role of dopamine suggest that dopamine has an influence on the processing of affective stimuli. There is some indirect evidence for this from studies showing an association between the treatment with dopaminergic agents and self-reported affect. Materials and methods: We addressed this issue directly by examining the electrophysiological correlates of affective picture processing during a single-dose treatment with a dopamine D2 agonist (bromocriptine), a dopamine D2 antagonist (haloperidol), and a placebo. We compared early and late event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that have been associated with affective processing in the three medication treatment conditions in a randomized double-blind crossover design amongst healthy males. In each treatment condition, subjects attentively watched neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant pictures while ERPs were recorded. Results: Results indicate that neither bromocriptine nor haloperidol has a selective effect on electrophysiological indices of affective processing. In concordance with this, no effects of dopaminergic modulation on self-reported positive or negative affect was observed. In contrast, bromocriptine decreased overall processing of all stimulus categories regardless of their affective content. Discussion: The results indicate that dopaminergic D2 receptors do not seem to play a crucial role in the selective processing of affective visual stimuli

Psychophysiological Correlates of Sexually and Non-Sexually Motivated Attention to Film Clips in a Workload Task

Some authors have speculated that the cognitive component (P3) of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) can function as a psychophysiological measure of sexual interest. The aim of this study was to determine if the P3 ERP component in a workload task can be used as a specific and objective measure of sexual motivation by comparing the neurophysiologic response to stimuli of motivational relevance with different levels of valence and arousal. A total of 30 healthy volunteers watched different films clips with erotic, horror, social-positive and social-negative content, while answering an auditory oddball paradigm. Erotic film clips resulted in larger interference when compared to both the social-positive and auditory alone conditions. Horror film clips resulted in the highest levels of interference with smaller P3 amplitudes than erotic and also than social-positive, social-negative and auditory alone condition. No gender differences were found. Both horror and erotic film clips significantly decreased heart rate (HR) when compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. The erotic film clips significantly increased the skin conductance level (SCL) compared to the social-negative films. The horror film clips significantly increased the SCL compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. Both the highly arousing erotic and non-erotic (horror) movies produced the largest decrease in the P3 amplitude, a decrease in the HR and an increase in the SCL. These data support the notion that this workload task is very sensitive to the attentional resources allocated to the film clip, although they do not act as a specific index of sexual interest. Therefore, the use of this methodology seems to be of questionable utility as a specific measure of sexual interest or as an objective measure of the severity of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder

The Impact of Acute Psychosocial Stress on Magnetoencephalographic Correlates of Emotional Attention and Exogenous Visual Attention

Stress-induced acute activation of the cerebral catecholaminergic systems has often been found in rodents. However, little is known regarding the consequences of this activation on higher cognitive functions in humans. Theoretical inferences would suggest increased distractibility in the sense of increased exogenous attention and emotional attention. The present study investigated the influence of acute stress responses on magnetoencephalographic (MEG) correlates of visual attention. Healthy male subjects were presented emotional and neutral pictures in three subsequent MEG recording sessions after being exposed to a TSST-like social stressor, intended to trigger a HPA-response. The subjects anticipation of another follow-up stressor was designed to sustain the short-lived central catecholaminergic stress reactions throughout the ongoing MEG recordings. The heart rate indicates a stable level of anticipatory stress during this time span, subsequent cortisol concentrations and self-report measures of stress were increased. With regard to the MEG correlates of attentional functions, we found that the N1m amplitude remained constantly elevated during stressor anticipation. The magnetic early posterior negativity (EPNm) was present but, surprisingly, was not at all modulated during stressor anticipation. This suggests that a general increase of the influence of exogenous attention but no specific effect regarding emotional attention in this time interval. Regarding the time course of the effects, an influence of the HPA on these MEG correlates of attention seems less likely. An influence of cerebral catecholaminergic systems is plausible, but not definite

First Impressions of HIV Risk: It Takes Only Milliseconds to Scan a Stranger

Research indicates that many people do not use condoms consistently but instead rely on intuition to identify sexual partners high at risk for HIV infection. The present studies examined neural correlates for first impressions of HIV risk and determined the association of perceived HIV risk with other trait characteristics. Participants were presented with 120 self-portraits retrieved from a popular online photo-sharing community (www.flickr.com). Factor analysis of various explicit ratings of trait characteristics yielded two orthogonal factors: (1) a ‘valence-approach’ factor encompassing perceived attractiveness, healthiness, valence, and approach tendencies, and (2) a ‘safeness’ factor, entailing judgments of HIV risk, trustworthiness, and responsibility. These findings suggest that HIV risk ratings systematically relate to cardinal features of a high-risk HIV stereotype. Furthermore, event-related brain potential recordings revealed neural correlates of first impressions about HIV risk. Target persons perceived as risky elicited a differential brain response in a time window from 220–340 ms and an increased late positive potential in a time window from 350–700 ms compared to those perceived as safe. These data suggest that impressions about HIV risk can be formed in a split second and despite a lack of information about the actual risk profile. Findings of neural correlates of risk impressions and their relationship to key features of the HIV risk stereotype are discussed in the context of the ‘risk as feelings’ theory

The Time Course of the Influence of Valence and Arousal on the Implicit Processing of Affective Pictures

In the current study, we investigated the time course of the implicit processing of affective pictures with an orthogonal design of valence (negative vs. positive) by arousal (low vs. high). Previous studies with explicit tasks suggested that valence mainly modulates early event-related potential (ERP) components, whereas arousal mainly modulates late components. However, in this study with an implicit task, we observed significant interactions between valence and arousal at both early and late stages over both parietal and frontal sites, which were reflected by three different ERP components: P2a (100–200 ms), N2 (200–300 ms), and P3 (300–400 ms). Furthermore, there was also a significant main effect of arousal on P2b (200–300 ms) over parieto-occipital sites. Our results suggest that valence and arousal effects on implicit affective processing are more complicated than previous ERP studies with explicit tasks have revealed

Imaging cortical activity following affective stimulation with a high temporal and spatial resolution

Keil J, Adenauer H, Catani C, Neuner F. Imaging cortical activity following affective stimulation with a high temporal and spatial resolution. BMC Neuroscience. 2009;10(1):83.Background:The affective and motivational relevance of a stimulus has a distinct impact on cortical processing, particularly in sensory areas. However, the spatial and temporal dynamics of this affective modulation of brain activities remains unclear. The purpose of the present study was the development of a paradigm to investigate the affective modulation of cortical networks with a high temporal and spatial resolution. We assessed cortical activity with MEG using a visual steady-state paradigm with affective pictures. A combination of a complex demodulation procedure with a minimum norm estimation was applied to assess the temporal variation of the topography of cortical activity. Results: Statistical permutation analyses of the results of the complex demodulation procedure revealed increased steady-state visual evoked field amplitudes over occipital areas following presentation of affective pictures compared to neutral pictures. This differentiation shifted in the time course from occipital regions to parietal and temporal regions. Conclusion: It can be shown that stimulation with affective pictures leads to an enhanced activity in occipital region as compared to neutral pictures. However, the focus of differentiation is not stable over time but shifts into temporal and parietal regions within four seconds of stimulation. Thus, it can be crucial to carefully choose regions of interests and time intervals when analyzing the affective modulation of cortical activity

Understanding traditional and modern eating: The TEP10 framework

Across the world, there has been a movement from traditional to modern eating, including a movement of traditional eating patterns from their origin culture to new cultures, and the emergence of new foods and eating behaviors. This trend toward modern eating is of particular significance because traditional eating has been related to positive health outcomes and sustainability. Yet, there is no consensus on what constitutes traditional and modern eating. The present study provides a comprehensive compilation of the various facets that seem to make up traditional and modern eating. Specifically, 106 facets were mentioned in the previous literature and expert discussions, combining international and interdisciplinary perspectives. The present study provides a framework (the TEP10 framework) systematizing these 106 facets into two major dimensions, what and how people eat, and 12 subdimensions. Hence, focusing only on single facets of traditional and modern eating is an oversimplification of this complex phenomenon. Instead, the multidimensionality and interplay between different facets should be considered to gain a comprehensive understanding of the trends, consequences, and underlying factors of traditional and modern eating

Valence-Specific Modulation in the Accumulation of Perceptual Evidence Prior to Visual Scene Recognition

Visual scene recognition is a dynamic process through which incoming sensory information is iteratively compared with predictions regarding the most likely identity of the input stimulus. In this study, we used a novel progressive unfolding task to characterize the accumulation of perceptual evidence prior to scene recognition, and its potential modulation by the emotional valence of these scenes. Our results show that emotional (pleasant and unpleasant) scenes led to slower accumulation of evidence compared to neutral scenes. In addition, when controlling for the potential contribution of non-emotional factors (i.e., familiarity and complexity of the pictures), our results confirm a reliable shift in the accumulation of evidence for pleasant relative to neutral and unpleasant scenes, suggesting a valence-specific effect. These findings indicate that proactive iterations between sensory processing and top-down predictions during scene recognition are reliably influenced by the rapidly extracted (positive) emotional valence of the visual stimuli. We interpret these findings in accordance with the notion of a genuine positivity offset during emotional scene recognition

Neutrino-electron scattering in noncommutative space

Neutral particles can couple with the $U(1)$ gauge field in the adjoint representation at the tree level if the space-time coordinates are noncommutative (NC). Considering neutrino-photon coupling in the NC QED framework, we obtain the differential cross section of neutrino-electron scattering. Similar to the magnetic moment effect, one of the NC terms is proportional to $\frac 1 T$, where $T$ is the electron recoil energy. Therefore, this scattering provides a chance to achieve a stringent bound on the NC scale in low energy by improving the sensitivity to the smaller electron recoil energy.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure