The IMC has organized a talk by Matthias Müller on emotion-attention interactions. Don't miss it!

Abstract:

Biasing competition for processing resources by emotional stimuli in early visual cortex of the human brain

In everyday life we are confronted with complex environmental settings that require highly adaptive interactions. Pivotal for adaptive behavior is to extract and process relevant sensory information while one has to ignore all other information that is not behaviorally relevant at a given moment. Emotional stimuli, relative to other visual stimuli, provide pivotal information about potential danger or threat that trigger defensive actions, or, conversely, prompt approach behavior when confronted with pleasant and appetitive stimuli. Therefore, emotional stimuli are assumed to have competitive processing advantages due to their intrinsic stimulus significance. In a number of studies we found clear evidence for a prioritized role for emotional stimulus processing in visual cortex. On the one hand, I will present studies that demonstrate that emotional stimuli serve as potent distractors when subjects are involved in a demanding visual detection task. On the other hand, our studies demonstrate that emotional compared to non-emotional stimuli attract more attentional resources, signifying preferential processing.  Furthermore, our studies suggest that competition for processing resources relies on higher-order cognitive processes, such as the extraction of the emotional content of a certain image.