Ambient Light Modulation of Exogenous Attention to Threat

Abstract

Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: El acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscription AcknowledgementsThis research was supported by the grants PSI2014-54853-P and PSI2012-37090 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (MINECO).2 Abstract Planet Earth's motion yields a 50% day -50% night yearly balance in every latitude or longitude, so survival must be guaranteed in very different light conditions in many species, including human. Cone-and rod-dominant vision, respectively specialized in light and darkness, present several processing differences, which are-at least partiallyreflected in event-related potentials (ERPs). The present experiment aimed at characterizing exogenous attention to threatening (spiders) and neutral (wheels) distractors in two environmental light conditions, low mesopic (L, 0.03 lux) and high mesopic (H, 6.5 lux), yielding a differential photoreceptor activity balance: rod>cone and rod<cone, respectively. These distractors were presented in the lower visual hemifield while the 40 participants were involved in a digit categorization task. Stimuli, both targets (digits) and distractors, were exactly the same in L and H. Both ERPs and behavioral performance in the task were recorded. Enhanced attentional capture by salient distractors was observed regardless of ambient light level. However, ERPs showed a differential pattern as a function of ambient light. Thus, significantly enhanced amplitude to salient distractors was observed in posterior P1 and early anterior P2 (P2a) only during the H context, in late P2a during the L context, and in occipital P3 during both H and L contexts. In other words, while exogenous attention to threat was equally efficient in light and darkness, conedominant exogenous attention was faster than rod-dominant, in line with previous data indicating slower processing times for rod-than for cone-dominant vision.

Retinotopy of emotion: Perception of negatively valenced stimuli presented at different spatial locations as revealed by event‐related potentials

“…This study reveals that affective‐related processes reflected in P1p are biased towards cone‐dependent and, consequently, parvocellular‐dependent visual processing. This in line with previous studies showing that P1p reflects cone‐biased exogenous attention to salient events (Carretié & Ruiz‐Padial, ). However, this bias may not occur in certain circumstances, as P1p enhanced responses to emotionally negative stimuli appearing out of fixation have also been reported in attentional tasks (Carretié et al, ), although these peripheral stimuli were not compared with stimuli presented at fixation since visual location was not explored.…”

Stimulus–response learning and expected reward value enhance stimulus cognitive processing: An ERP study

“…In other words, the P3b/P3o effect might be due (at least in part) to some factor unrelated to S‐R links (see also Verleger et al., 2016). For instance, reward learning might increase the acquired salience of those relevant S predicting reward (Kahnt et al., 2014); and it might be the case that in our experiment, high‐value and fixed stimuli acquired more perceptual salience, which was associated with the P3o (Carretié & Ruiz‐Padial, 2016).…”

“…Furthermore, and in a more exploratory way, we analyzed the channel in which this component reached its maximum level across the whole scalp distribution, that is, the occipital channel O2. An occipital P3 (or P3o) has previously been reported to show association with exogenous attention to threat (Carretié & Ruiz‐Padial, 2016) and target processing in visual search arrays (Luck & Hillyard, 1990, 1994), indicating that it is sensitive to stimulus salience. P3b (Pz) and P3o (O2) were independently modulated by block type (fixed vs. random response options) and/or outcome value (high‐ vs. low‐outcome availability) factors.…”

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

“…These results have important implications not only at the cortical level, but also at the subcortical. Regarding the former, they reveal certain parallelism with what occurs in response to supraliminal emotional stimulation, since early visual ERP components also show sensitivity to emotional stimuli (C1: Acunzo et al, 2019; Eldar et al, 2010; Pourtois et al, 2004; P1p: Carretié & Ruiz-Padial, 2016; Holmes et al, 2008; Luo et al, 2010). However, the effects are more difficult to detect in this case and, along with the implementation of the issues mentioned in the previous paragraph, have required the quantification of differential CP1-C2 amplitudes (a classical way of computing amplitudes that seems useful in this field) rather than individual component amplitudes.…”

“…On the other hand, P1p is originated in dorsal areas of the visual extrastriate cortex according to these studies. Despite C1 and P1p (C2 has not been explored at this respect) have been reported to be sensitive to the emotional content of supraliminal emotional stimuli (C1: Acunzo et al, 2019; Eldar et al, 2010; Pourtois et al, 2004; P1p: Carretié & Ruiz-Padial, 2016; Holmes et al, 2008; Luo et al, 2010), their sensitivity the emotional content of subliminal stimuli has not been studied yet, to the best of our knowledge. This issue would be relevant at several cerebral levels.…”