Temporal-spatial neural activation patterns linked to perceptual encoding of emotional salience

PLoS One. 2014 Apr 11;9(4):e93753. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0093753. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

It is well known that we continuously filter incoming sensory information, selectively allocating attention to what is important while suppressing distracting or irrelevant information. Yet questions remain about spatiotemporal patterns of neural processes underlying attentional biases toward emotionally significant aspects of the world. One index of affectively biased attention is an emotional variant of an attentional blink (AB) paradigm, which reveals enhanced perceptual encoding for emotionally salient over neutral stimuli under conditions of limited executive attention. The present study took advantage of the high spatial and temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate neural activation related to emotional and neutral targets in an AB task. MEG data were collected while participants performed a rapid stimulus visual presentation task in which two target stimuli were embedded in a stream of distractor words. The first target (T1) was a number and the second (T2) either an emotionally salient or neutral word. Behavioural results replicated previous findings of greater accuracy for emotionally salient than neutral T2 words. MEG source analyses showed that activation in orbitofrontal cortex, characterized by greater power in the theta and alpha bands, and dorsolateral prefrontal activation were associated with successful perceptual encoding of emotionally salient relative to neutral words. These effects were observed between 250 and 550 ms, latencies associated with discrimination of perceived from unperceived stimuli. These data suggest that important nodes of both emotional salience and frontoparietal executive systems are associated with the emotional modulation of the attentional blink.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Attention
  • Attentional Blink / physiology
  • Emotions / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Magnetoencephalography
  • Male
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was funded by a Defence Research and Development Canada contract (W7719-135128/001/TOR) to MJT and EWP (http://www.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/en/partnerships.page). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.