Neurophysiological mechanisms in the emotional modulation of attention: The interplay between threat sensitivity and attentional control

Abstract

Processing task-irrelevant emotional information may compromise attention performance, particularly among those showing elevated threat sensitivity. If threat-sensitive individuals are able to recruit attentional control to inhibit emotional processing, however, they may show few decrements in attention performance. To examine this hypothesis, attention performance was measured in three domains-alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Task-irrelevant fearful, sad, and happy faces were presented for 50 ms before each trial of the attention task to create a mildly competitive emotional context. Electroencephalographic recordings were made from 64 scalp electrodes to generate event-related potentials (ERPs) to the faces. Participants reporting high threat sensitivity showed enhanced ERPs thought to reflect emotional processing (P200) and attentional control (P100 and N200). Enhanced N200 following fearful faces was linked to sustained and even slightly improved executive attention performance (reduced conflict interference) among high threatsensitive individuals, but with decrements in executive attention among low threat-sensitive individuals. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive processing efficiency and the balance between threat sensitivity and attentional control in relation to executive attention performance. Results may have implications for understanding automatic and voluntary attentional biases related to anxiety. KeywordsCognitive control; Event-related brain potentials; Behavioral inhibition system; Emotion-attention interactions Preferential processing of negative emotional information may compromise attention performance (Cacioppo and Berntson, 1994;Hare et al., 2005;Simpson et al., 2000). This relatively automatic 'negativity bias' is adaptive because it facilitates rapid processing of threat, but may also deplete the resources available for more voluntary control of attention performance (Bishop et al., 2004;Desimone and Duncan, 1995;Kieras et al., 2000;Miller and Cohen, 2001).Individuals who show behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity and anxious mood are thought to show enhanced negativity biases, particularly towards threat and fear-related stimuli (Bishop et al., 2004;Carver and Scheier, 1998;Gray and McNaughton, 2000;Higgins et al., 1997;Leen-Feldner et al., 2004;Mathews and Mackintosh, 1998). Threat-sensitivity is more likely to interfere with attention when it exceeds an optimal level: for example, elevated anxiety has been shown to increase the negative impact of threat-related emotional stimuli on executive attention (Jazbec et al., 2005;Mathews and Mackintosh, 1998;Wood et al., 2001) such as conflict interference tasks (Fenske and Eastwood, 2003;Williams et al., 1996).BIS-sensitive individuals, however, vary in the degree to which they recruit cognitive control resources to inhibit attention towards emotional information (Gray and Burgess, 2004) and in the degree to which this attentional control supports attention performance (Derryberry and Reed, 2002). For ex...

Attentional bias to affective faces and complex IAPS images in early visual cortex follows emotional cue extraction

“…Crouzet et al 2010;Kirchner and Thorpe 2006) is much faster and emotional cue extraction of facial expressions might be finished with the N170 component (Gilles Pourtois, personal communication), future studies that use a better temporal resolution might shed light on our somewhat surprising findings with respect to facial distractors. It is also worth noting that the effect of emotional facial expression on the N170 remains yet unsettled in the literature, with considerable amount of studies reported no modulation of the N170 with facial affect (Dennis and Chen 2007;Holmes et al 2005;Schupp, Öhman et al 2004). Recent evidence by Rellecke and colleagues suggest that some methodological factors such as electrode reference might provide a potential explanation to so far conflicting evidence with regard to N170 modulations with emotion (Rellecke et al 2013).…”

Individual differences in cardiac vagal tone are associated with differential neural responses to facial expressions at different spatial frequencies: An ERP and sLORETA study

“…For example, greater N200 amplitudes were elicited by emotional facial expressions (e.g., fearful, sad, and angry) than by neutral facial expressions (Campanella et al, 2002;Williams et al, 2004). Furthermore, people with heightened trait anxiety showed greater N200 amplitudes than did people with low trait anxiety (Dennis & Chen, 2007). Therefore, we hypothesized that participants with low resting HRV would show greater N200 activity evoked by LSF and/or HSF fearful faces, as compared with participants with high resting HRV, possibly reflecting poor self-regulatory capacity in response to affectively significant stimuli.…”

“…The N200 component-peaking at frontal-midline regions around 200 to 350 ms after stimulus onset-is associated with emotional and behavioral self-regulation (e.g., Liddell, Williams, Rathjen, Shevrin, & Gordon, 2006;Williams et al, 2004). Converging evidence suggested that reduced N200 activity indicates highly functional regulatory systems (Dennis & Chen, 2007;Lamm & Lewis, 2010;Liddell et al, 2006;Williams et al, 2004). In contrast, greater N200 activity is associated with impaired regulatory systems and reflects the depletion of cognitive resources necessary to inhibit affectively significant stimuli (Dennis & Chen, 2007).…”

“…Converging evidence suggested that reduced N200 activity indicates highly functional regulatory systems (Dennis & Chen, 2007;Lamm & Lewis, 2010;Liddell et al, 2006;Williams et al, 2004). In contrast, greater N200 activity is associated with impaired regulatory systems and reflects the depletion of cognitive resources necessary to inhibit affectively significant stimuli (Dennis & Chen, 2007). For example, greater N200 amplitudes were elicited by emotional facial expressions (e.g., fearful, sad, and angry) than by neutral facial expressions (Campanella et al, 2002;Williams et al, 2004).…”

Detecting Vigilance in People Performing Continual Monitoring Task

“…In this regard, the Event Related Potentials (ERPs) present in the EEG signals have successfully been utilized to study the changes occurring in the human brain with passing time [10]. For instance, ERP features namely P100-N200 have been utilized for studying emotional information processing in [11]; frontal midline theta and N200 ERP have been shown to reflect complementary information about expectancy and outcome evaluation in [12]; in [13] authors utilized N200 ERP for word recognition; in [14], N100, P200, N200 and P300 ERP components have been used to study the impact of depression on attention. Further, ERPs have also been used for understanding reaction times in response to pictures of people depicting pain [15]; in [16] ERPs have been utilized to understand the state of brain in schizophrenia patients; in [17] authors demonstrated the association of mMMN, P200 and P500 ERP components with artificial grammar learning in the primate brain; in [18], N400 and the P200 components have been utilized in the investigation of semantic and phonological processing in skilled and less-skilled comprehenders; besides, ERPs have also found utility in studying multisensory integration (MSI) ability of the brain in school-aged children [19].…”