Slow biasing of processing resources in early visual cortex is preceded by emotional cue extraction in emotion–attention competition

Schönwald, Liane I.; Müller, Matthias

doi:10.1002/hbm.22267

Cited by 31 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…In our previous studies we consistently showed a significantly greater decrease in SSVEP amplitude for an emotional compared to a neutral background IAPS picture between 400 to 475 ms following the picture onset (Hindi Attar et al 2010;Müller et al 2011;Schönwald and Müller 2014) and lasting up to 1 sec (Müller et al 2008). In the distraction paradigm, the reduction of SSVEP amplitude as a function of valence of the background distractor signifies the withdrawal of attentional resources away from the flickering stimulus toward a background distractor-image (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 51%

“…the VEP elicited by IAPS images and the SSVEP evoked by the flickering squares or dots that formed the foreground task, we found that the IAPS N1-EPN complex (190-360 ms) clearly preceded the differential effect of SSVEP amplitude reduction as a function of valence of the background IAPS, which was observable around 400 ms (Schönwald and Müller 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…Onsets of target events were uniformly distributed over the time window from 800 ms before and 1867 ms after the onset of an intact background face/IAPS picture. Given that the duration of the event was 266.7 ms, we calculated correct responses within time bins of 266.7 ms by averaging across 4 short bins of 66.67ms (in order to keep every time bin identical to the duration of the target event (see also (Hindi Attar et al 2010;Schönwald and Müller 2014)). This resulted in 10 time windows of 266.7 ms each.…”

Section: Data Analysis: Behavioral Data and Sam Ratingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, in some studies (see a recent overview by Olofsson et al 2008), the effects of affective processing are seen even earlier at the level of the N1 (with a variation of the peak latency between 160 to 190 ms, Weinberg and Hajcak 2010). The topographical distribution of differences for emotional minus neutral pictures in the N1 and EPN is almost identical, and thus the neural signature of emotional cue extraction of IAPS images may be better described as early negativities (Weinberg and Hajcak 2010), or an N1-EPN complex (Schönwald and Müller 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In recent years, we published a number of studies in which we used a distraction paradigm to investigate the neural dynamics of attentional resource competition in early visual cortex between a foreground task and an emotional distractor (Hindi Attar et al 2010;Müller et al 2008;Müller et al 2011;Schönwald and Müller 2014). In these experiments, participants attended to a random dot kinematogram (RDK) that continuously flickered at a specific frequency, and were asked to detect and respond to periods of coherent motion events of those dots (targets).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2015

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Emotionally arousing stimuli are known to rapidly draw the brain's processing resources, even when they are task-irrelevant. The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) response, a neural response to a flickering stimulus which effectively allows measurement of the processing resources devoted to that stimulus, has been used to examine this process of attentional shifting. Previous studies have used a task in which participants detected periods of coherent motion in flickering random dot kinematograms (RDKs) which generate an SSVEP, and found that task-irrelevant emotional stimuli rapidly withdraw attentional resources from the task-relevant RDKs. However, it is not clear whether the changes in the SSVEP response are conditional on higher-level extraction of emotional cues as indexed by well-known event-related potential (ERPs) components, or if affective bias in competition for visual attention resources could be a consequence of an inherent, relatively time-invariant shifting process. In the present study, we used two different types of emotional distractors -IAPS pictures and facial expressions -for which emotional cue extraction occurs at different speeds, being typically earlier for faces (at ~170 ms, as indexed by the N170) than for IAPS images (220-230 ms, Early Posterior Negativity, EPN). We found that attentional resources were withdrawn from the foreground task towards task-irrelevant emotional background images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) following the extraction of emotional cues as indexed by visual ERP components. We also found that emotional modulation of attentional resources as measured by the SSVEP occurred earlier for faces (around 180 ms) than for IAPS pictures (around 400 ms). This is consistent with lowlevel attentional resources being re-allocated after emotional cue extraction rather than being linked to a time-fixed shifting process.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Data Analysis: Behavioral Data and Sam Ratingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2015

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Steady-state visually evoked potential correlates of human body perception

et al. 2016

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In cognitive neuroscience, interest in the neuronal basis underlying the processing of human bodies is steadily increasing. Based on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, it is assumed that the processing of pictures of human bodies is anchored in a network of specialized brain areas comprising the extrastriate and the fusiform body area (EBA, FBA). An alternative to examine the dynamics within these networks is electroencephalography, more specifically so-called steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs). In SSVEP tasks, a visual stimulus is presented repetitively at a predefined flickering rate and typically elicits a continuous oscillatory brain response at this frequency. This brain response is characterized by an excellent signal-to-noise ratio-a major advantage for source reconstructions. The main goal of present study was to demonstrate the feasibility of this method to study human body perception. To that end, we presented pictures of bodies and contrasted the resulting SSVEPs to two control conditions, i.e., non-objects and pictures of everyday objects (chairs). We found specific SSVEPs amplitude differences between bodies and both control conditions. Source reconstructions localized the SSVEP generators to a network of temporal, occipital and parietal areas. Interestingly, only body perception resulted in activity differences in middle temporal and lateral occipitotemporal areas, most likely reflecting the EBA/FBA.

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