Emotion Improves and Impairs Early Vision

Perception-action Dissociations as a Window into Consciousness

Understanding the neural correlates of unconscious perception stands as a primary goal of experimental research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. In this Perspectives paper, we explain why experimental protocols probing qualitative dissociations between perception and action provide valuable insights into conscious and unconscious processing, along with their corresponding neural correlates. We present research that utilizes human eye movements as a sensitive indicator of unconscious visual processing. Given the increasing reliance on oculomotor and pupillary responses in consciousness research, these dissociations also provide a cautionary tale about inferring conscious perception solely based on no-report protocols.

Emotional response evoked by viewing facial expression pictures leads to higher temporal resolution

We examined the effects of emotional response, with different levels of valence and arousal, on the temporal resolution of visual processing by using photos of various facial expressions. As an index of the temporal resolution of visual processing, we measured the minimum lengths of the noticeable durations for desaturated photographs using the method of constant stimuli by switching colorful facial expression photographs to desaturated versions of the same photographs. Experiments 1 and 2 used facial photographs that evoke various degrees of arousal and valence. Those photographs were prepared not only in an upright orientation but also in an inverted orientation to reduce emotional response without changing the photographs' image properties. Results showed that the minimum duration to notice monochrome photographs for anger, fear, and joy was shorter than that for a neutral face when viewing upright face photographs but not when viewing inverted face photographs. For Experiment 3, we used facial expression photographs to evoke various degrees of arousal. Results showed that the temporal resolution of visual processing increased with the degree of arousal. These results suggest that the arousal of emotional responses evoked by viewing facial expressions might increase the temporal resolution of visual processing.

Threat shapes visual context sensitivity selectively through low-spatial-frequency channels

Threat has long been supposed to affect human cognitive processing including visual size perception. Whether such threat-related modulation effect varies as a function of spatial frequency is largely unexplored. Here we used low- or high-pass filtered threatening animal and fearful face images as primes and measured their effects on the processing of the Ebbinghaus illusion. Results showed that threatening-animal primes relative to neutral ones significantly decreased the illusion magnitude in low-spatial-frequency rather than in high-spatial-frequency ranges. However, fearful- and neutral-face primes had a comparable effect on the illusion magnitude in both spatial frequency ranges. Notably, when inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to the left temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), fearful-face primes significantly decreased the illusion magnitude in low-spatial-frequency rather than in high-spatial-frequency ranges. However, the opposite pattern of results was observed with right TPJ stimulation. The findings suggest that threat shapes basic aspects of visual perception in a spatial frequency-specific manner, possibly via magnocellular projections from both subcortical and cortical fear-processing systems to early visual cortex.

Mugs and Plants: Object Semantic Knowledge Alters Perceptual Processing With Behavioral Ramifications

Neural processing of objects with action associations recruits dorsal visual regions more than the neural processing of objects without such associations. We hypothesized that because the dorsal and ventral visual pathways have differing proportions of magno- and parvocellular input, there should be behavioral differences in perceptual tasks between manipulable and nonmanipulable objects. This hypothesis was tested in college-age adults across five experiments (Ns = 26, 26, 30, 25, and 25) using a gap-detection task, suited to the spatial resolution of parvocellular processing, and an object-flicker-discrimination task, suited to the temporal resolution of magnocellular processing. Directly predicted from the cellular composition of each pathway, a strong nonmanipulable-object advantage was observed in gap detection, and a small manipulable-object advantage was observed in flicker discrimination. Additionally, these effects were modulated by reducing object recognition through inversion and by suppressing magnocellular processing using red light. These results establish perceptual differences between objects dependent on semantic knowledge.

Abnormal physiological responses toward sensory stimulus are related to the attention deficits in children with sluggish cognitive tempo

Previous studies have found that sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) is often associated with difficulties in real-life functioning, such as social problems, emotional difficulties, and academic learning difficulties. However, the underlying mechanisms contributing to the SCT symptoms and its associated real-life difficulties have still not been clearly understood. A previous study has found that SCT symptoms were associated with hypoarousal and hyperarousal toward the sensory stimulus. However, it is still unclear whether such abnormal arousal regulation is related to sustained attention difficulties that have been found to be related to social difficulties and withdrawn behavior in children with SCT. In this study, arousal regulation deficit in SCT is examined by the physiological responses quantified by HRV and EEG in the sensory challenge paradigm. This study aimed to establish a linkage between arousal regulation reflected by HRV and EEG and attention difficulties in children with SCT. The results of this study showed that higher theta power in the auditory stimulation condition than in the resting condition was associated with higher omission errors in sustained attention tasks in the SCT group. It was also found that higher parasympathetic activities during sensory stimulation conditions were associated with higher commission errors in the SCT group. These results reflected that hypersensitivity toward stressful sensitivity toward a stressful sensory stimulus is associated with attention difficulties in children with SCT. This further supported the notion that SCT should be conceptualized as a condition characterized by multiple deficits in different biological systems, such as the cognitive system, the negative valence system, and the arousal regulatory system.

Spatial frequency processing and its modulation by emotional content in severe alcohol use disorder

RATIONALE

Visuo-perceptive deficits in severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD) remain little understood, notably regarding the respective involvement of the two main human visual streams, i.e., magnocellular (MC) and parvocellular (PC) pathways, in these deficits. Besides, in healthy populations, low-level visual perception can adapt depending on the nature of visual cues, among which emotional features, but this MC and PC pathway adaptation to emotional content is unexplored in SAUD.

OBJECTIVES

To assess MC and PC functioning as well as their emotional modulations in SAUD.

METHODS

We used sensitivity indices (d') and repeated-measures analyses of variance to compare orientation judgments of Gabor patches sampled at various MC- and PC-related spatial frequencies in 35 individuals with SAUD and 38 matched healthy controls. We then explored how emotional content modulated performances by introducing neutral or fearful face cues immediately before the Gabor patches and added the type of cue in the analyses.

RESULTS

SAUD patients showed a general reduction in sensitivity across all spatial frequencies, indicating impoverished processing of both coarse and fine-scale visual content. However, we observed selective impairments depending on facial cues: individuals with SAUD processed intermediate spatial frequencies less efficiently than healthy controls following neutral faces, whereas group differences emerged for the highest spatial frequencies following fearful faces. Altogether, SAUD was associated with mixed MC and PC deficits that may vary according to emotional content, in line with a flexible but suboptimal use of low-level visual content. Such subtle alterations could have implications for everyday life's complex visual judgments.

Visual abilities in Severe Alcohol Use Disorder: Preserved spatial but impaired temporal resolution

Visuospatial impairments have long been reported in Severe Alcohol Use Disorder but remain poorly understood, notably regarding the involvement of magnocellular (MC) and parvocellular (PC) pathways. This empirical gap hampers the understanding of the implications of these visual changes, especially since the MC and PC pathways are thought to sustain central bottom-up and top-down processes during cognitive processing. They thus influence our ability to efficiently monitor our environment and make the most effective decisions. To overcome this limitation, we measured PC-inferred spatial and MC-inferred temporal resolution in 35 individuals with SAUD and 30 healthy controls. We used Landolt circles displaying small apertures outside the sensitivity range of MC cells or flickering at a temporal frequency exceeding PC sensitivity. We found evidence of preserved PC spatial resolution combined with impaired MC temporal resolution in SAUD. We also measured how spatial and temporal sensitivity is influenced by the prior presentation of fearful faces - as emotional content could favor MC processing over PC one - but found no evidence of emotional modulation in either group. This spatio-temporal dissociation implies that individuals with SAUD may process visual details efficiently but perceive rapidly updating visual information at a slower pace. This deficit has implications for the tracking of rapidly changing stimuli in experimental tasks, but also for the decoding of crucial everyday visual incentives such as faces, whose micro-expressions vary continuously. Future studies should further specify the visual profile of individuals with SAUD to incorporate disparate findings within a theoretically grounded model of vision.

Mental imagery can generate and regulate acquired differential fear conditioned reactivity

Mental imagery is an important tool in the cognitive control of emotion. The present study tests the prediction that visual imagery can generate and regulate differential fear conditioning via the activation and prioritization of stimulus representations in early visual cortices. We combined differential fear conditioning with manipulations of viewing and imagining basic visual stimuli in humans. We discovered that mental imagery of a fear-conditioned stimulus compared to imagery of a safe conditioned stimulus generated a significantly greater conditioned response as measured by self-reported fear, the skin conductance response, and right anterior insula activity (experiment 1). Moreover, mental imagery effectively down- and up-regulated the fear conditioned responses (experiment 2). Multivariate classification using the functional magnetic resonance imaging data from retinotopically defined early visual regions revealed significant decoding of the imagined stimuli in V2 and V3 (experiment 1) but significantly reduced decoding in these regions during imagery-based regulation (experiment 2). Together, the present findings indicate that mental imagery can generate and regulate a differential fear conditioned response via mechanisms of the depictive theory of imagery and the biased-competition theory of attention. These findings also highlight the potential importance of mental imagery in the manifestation and treatment of psychological illnesses.

The Filter Detection Task for measurement of breathing-related interoception and metacognition

The study of the brain's processing of sensory inputs from within the body ('interoception') has been gaining rapid popularity in neuroscience, where interoceptive disturbances are thought to exist across a wide range of chronic physiological and psychological conditions. Here we present a task and analysis procedure to quantify specific dimensions of breathing-related interoception, including interoceptive sensitivity, decision bias, metacognitive bias, and metacognitive performance. Two major developments address some of the challenges presented by low trial numbers in interoceptive experiments: (i) a novel adaptive algorithm to maintain task performance at 70-75% accuracy; (ii) an extended hierarchical metacognitive model to estimate regression parameters linking metacognitive performance to relevant (e.g. clinical) variables. We demonstrate the utility of the task and analysis developments, using both simulated data and three empirical datasets. This methodology represents an important step towards accurately quantifying interoceptive dimensions from a simple experimental procedure that is compatible with clinical settings.

Right Hemisphere Dominance for Unconscious Emotionally Salient Stimuli

The present review will focus on evidence demonstrating the prioritization in visual processing of fear-related signals in the absence of awareness. Evidence in hemianopic patients without any form of blindsight or affective blindsight in classical terms will be presented, demonstrating that fearful faces, via a subcortical colliculo-pulvinar-amygdala pathway, have a privileged unconscious visual processing and facilitate responses towards visual stimuli in the intact visual field. Interestingly, this fear-specific implicit visual processing in hemianopics has only been observed after lesions to the visual cortices in the left hemisphere, while no effect was found in patients with damage to the right hemisphere. This suggests that the subcortical route for emotional processing in the right hemisphere might provide a pivotal contribution to the implicit processing of fear, in line with evidence showing enhanced right amygdala activity and increased connectivity in the right colliculo-pulvinar-amygdala pathway for unconscious fear-conditioned stimuli and subliminal fearful faces. These findings will be discussed within a theoretical framework that considers the amygdala as an integral component of a constant and continuous vigilance system, which is preferentially invoked with stimuli signaling ambiguous environmental situations of biological relevance, such as fearful faces.

Reward-driven attention alters perceived salience

Many studies have revealed that reward-associated features capture attention. Neurophysiological evidence further suggests that this reward-driven attention effect modulates visual processes by enhancing low-level visual salience. However, no behavioral study to date has directly examined whether reward-driven attention changes how people see. Combining the two-phase paradigm with a psychophysical method, the current study found that compared with nonsalient cues associated with lower reward, the nonsalient cues associated with higher reward captured more attention, and increased the perceived contrast of the subsequent stimuli. This is the first direct behavioral evidence of the effect of reward-driven attention on low-level visual perception.

State anxiety modulates the effect of emotion cues on visual temporal sensitivity in autism spectrum disorder

Atypical processing of stimulus inputs across a range of sensory modalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is widely reported. Sensory processing is known to be influenced by bodily internal states such as physiological arousal and anxiety. As a sizeable proportion of ASD reportedly have co-morbid anxiety disorders that are linked with dysregulated arousal, we investigated if face emotion arousal cues influenced visual sensory sensitivity (indexed by temporal resolution) in ASD (n = 20) compared to a matched group of typically developed individuals (TD, n = 21). We asked further if emotion-cued changes in visual sensitivity were associated with individual differences in state and trait anxiety. Participants reported the laterality of the second of two consecutive Gaussian-blob flashes in a visual temporal order judgment task (v-TOJ), demanding higher-level visual processing. The key manipulation was presenting a task-irrelevant face emotion cue briefly at unexpected time points preceding the task-relevant flashes. Disgust vs. Neutral emotion signals significantly enhanced the visual temporal resolution in ASD. Individual state-anxiety scores showed a fair correlative trend with the emotion-cued changes in temporal resolution (Disgust versus Neutral) in ASD but missed statistical significance. Both these effects were absent in TD. The results show that individual state-anxiety levels likely modulate the effect of emotions on visual temporal sensitivity in ASD. The findings support a nuanced approach to understand the disparate sensory features in ASD, by factoring in the interplay of the individual reactivity to environmental affective information and the severity of anxiety.

How Does Fearful Emotion Affect Visual Attention?

It has long been suggested that emotion, especially threatening emotion, facilitates early visual perception to promote adaptive responses to potential threats in the environment. Here, we tested whether and how fearful emotion affects the basic visual ability of visual acuity. An adapted Posner’s spatial cueing task was employed, with fearful and neutral faces as cues and a Vernier discrimination task as the probe. The time course of the emotional attention effect was examined by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of the cue and probe. Two independent experiments (Experiments 1 and 3) consistently demonstrated that the brief presentation of a fearful face increased visual acuity at its location. The facilitation of perceptual sensitivity was detected at an SOA around 300 ms when the face cues were presented for both 250 ms (Experiment 1) and 150 ms (Experiment 3). This effect cannot be explained by physical differences between the fearful and neutral faces because no improvement was found when the faces were presented inverted (Experiment 2). In the last experiment (Experiment 4), the face cues were flashed very briefly (17 ms), and we did not find any improvement induced by the fearful face. Overall, we provide evidence that emotion interacts with attention to affect basic visual functions.

Fear-related signals are prioritised in visual, somatosensory and spatial systems

The human brain has evolved a multifaceted fear system, allowing threat detection to enable rapid adaptive responses crucial for survival. Although many cortical and subcortical brain areas are believed to be involved in the survival circuits detecting and responding to threat, the amygdala has reportedly a crucial role in the fear system. Here, we review evidence demonstrating that fearful faces, a specific category of salient stimuli indicating the presence of threat in the surrounding, are preferentially processed in the fear system and in the connected sensory cortices, even when they are presented outside of awareness or are irrelevant to the task. In the visual domain, we discuss evidence showing in hemianopic patients that fearful faces, via a subcortical colliculo-pulvinar-amygdala pathway, have a privileged visual processing even in the absence of awareness and facilitate responses towards visual stimuli in the intact visual field. Moreover, evidence showing that somatosensory cortices prioritise fearful-related signals, to the extent that tactile processing is enhanced in the presence of fearful faces, will be also reported. Finally, we will review evidence revealing that fearful faces have a pivotal role in modulating responses in peripersonal space, in line with the defensive functional definition of PPS.

Suppression durations for facial expressions under breaking continuous flash suppression: effects of faces' low-level image properties

Perceptual biases for fearful facial expressions are observed across many studies. According to the low-level, visual-based account of these biases, fear expressions are advantaged in some way due to their image properties, such as low spatial frequency content. However, there is a degree of empirical disagreement regarding the range of spatial frequency information responsible for perceptual biases. Breaking continuous flash suppression (b. CFS) has explored these effects, showing similar biases for detecting fearful facial expressions. Recent findings from a b. CFS study highlight the role of high, rather than low spatial frequency content in determining faces' visibility. The present study contributes to ongoing discussions regarding the efficacy of b. CFS, and shows that the visibility of facial expressions vary according to how they are normalised for physical contrast and spatially filtered. Findings show that physical contrast normalisation facilitates fear's detectability under b. CFS more than when normalised for apparent contrast, and that this effect is most pronounced when faces are high frequency filtered. Moreover, normalising faces' perceived contrast does not guarantee equality between expressions' visibility under b. CFS. Findings have important implications for the use of contrast normalisation, particularly regarding the extent to which contrast normalisation facilitates fear bias effects.

A Bottom-Up Validation of the IAPS, GAPED, and NAPS Affective Picture Databases: Differential Effects on Behavioral Performance

The concept of emotion is a complex neural and psychological phenomenon, central to the organization of human social behavior. As the result of subjective experience, emotions involve bottom-up cognitive styles responsible for efficient adaptation of human behavior to the environment based on salient goals. Indeed, bottom-up cognitive processes are mandatory for clarifying emotion-cognition interactions. Accordingly, a huge number of studies and standardized affective stimuli databases have been developed (i.e., International Affective Picture System (IAPS), Geneva Affective Picture Database (GAPED), and Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS)). However, these neither accurately reflect the complex neural system underlying emotional responses nor do they offer a comprehensive framework for researchers. The present article aims to provide an additional bottom-up validation of affective stimuli that are independent from cognitive processing and control mechanisms, related to the implicit relevance and evolutionistic significance of stimuli. A subset of 360 images from the original NAPS, GAPED, and IAPS datasets was selected in order to proportionally cover the whole dimensional affective space. Among these, using a two-step analysis strategy, we identified three clusters (“good performance”, “poor performance”, and “false alarm”) of stimuli with similar cognitive response profiles. Results showed that the three clusters differed in terms of arousal and database membership, but not in terms of valence. The new database, with accompanying ratings and image parameters, allows researchers to select visual stimuli independent from dimensional/discrete-categories, and provides information on the implicit effects triggered by such stimuli.

Anodal tDCS of right temporo-parietal junction promotes threat detection in low-spatial-frequency channels

Fast detection of threat is crucial for survival. Previous studies have suggested the involvement of low- and high-spatial-frequency (LSF and HSF) information in the process of threat detection. However, the specific contributions of LSF and HSF information to it are still controversial. Here we probed this issue by utilizing a prime procedure coupled with the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) technique. Specifically, in a single-blind design, participants were exposed to LSF or HSF faces prior to the presentation of looming or receding spheres. Meanwhile, tDCS was applied over the right or left temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), which has been found to be preferentially associated with the processing of LSF and HSF information, respectively. The results showed significant LSF-related facilitation of threat detection when anodal tDCS was applied to the right TPJ. However, HSF-related facilitation of threat detection was not observed when anodal tDCS was applied to the left TPJ. The findings support the idea that LSF information can facilitate threat detection, and provide direct evidence that the right TPJ is vital for LSF-related facilitation of threat detection.

Not All Emotions Are Equal: Fear Chemosignals Lower Awareness Thresholds Only for Fearful Faces

Exposure to body odors (chemosignals) collected under different emotional states (i.e., emotional chemosignals) can modulate our visual system, biasing visual perception. Recent research has suggested that exposure to fear body odors, results in a generalized faster access to visual awareness of different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral). In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending these findings by exploring if these effects are limited to fear odor, by introducing a second negative body odor—that is, disgust. We compared the time that 3 different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral) took to reach visual awareness, during a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, across 3 body odor conditions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral). We found that fear body odors do not trigger an overall faster access to visual awareness, but instead sped-up access to awareness specifically for facial expressions of fear. Disgust odor, on the other hand, had no effects on awareness thresholds of facial expressions. These findings contrast with prior results, suggesting that the potential of fear body odors to induce visual processing adjustments is specific to fear cues. Furthermore, our results support a unique ability of fear body odors in inducing such visual processing changes, compared with other negative emotional chemosignals (i.e., disgust). These conclusions raise interesting questions as to how fear odor might interact with the visual processing stream, whilst simultaneously giving rise to future avenues of research.

Testing the magnocellular-pathway advantage in facial expressions processing for consistency over time

The ability to identify facial expressions rapidly and accurately is central to human evolution. Previous studies have demonstrated that this ability relies to a large extent on the magnocellular, rather than parvocellular, visual pathway, which is biased toward processing low spatial frequencies. Despite the generally consistent finding, no study to date has investigated the reliability of this effect over time. In the present study, 40 participants completed a facial emotion identification task (fearful, happy, or neutral faces) using facial images presented at three different spatial frequencies (low, high, or broad spatial frequency), at two time points separated by one year. Bayesian statistics revealed an advantage for the magnocellular pathway in processing facial expressions; however, no effect for time was found. Furthermore, participants' RT patterns of results were highly stable over time. Our replication, together with the consistency of our measurements within subjects, underscores the robustness of this effect. This capacity, therefore, may be considered in a trait-like manner, suggesting that individuals may possess various ability levels for processing facial expressions that can be captured in behavioral measurements.

Better memory for intrinsic versus extrinsic details underlies the enhanced recollective experience of negative events

Why we remember emotional events with an increased subjective sense of remembering (SSR) is unclear. SSR for neutral events is linked to memory for various kinds of details. Using the Remember/Know paradigm, participants provided written justifications of their Remember responses indicating what they specifically recollected about a negative or neutral photo seen during encoding. Crucially, Remember responses for negative photos were more often linked to memory for details of the stimuli (intrinsic details) versus details related to external associations (extrinsic details) or emotional reaction at encoding, suggesting that memory for intrinsic details underlies the enhanced SSR of negative stimuli.

Towards a Dynamic Exploration of Vision, Cognition and Emotion in Alcohol-Use Disorders

Abstract: Visuoperceptive impairments are among the most frequently reported deficits in alcohol-use disorders, but only very few studies have investigated their origin and interactions with other categories of dysfunctions. Besides, these deficits have generally been interpreted in a linear bottom-up perspective, which appears very restrictive with respect to the new models of vision developed in healthy populations. Indeed, new theories highlight the predictive nature of the visual system and demonstrate that it interacts with higher-level cognitive functions to generate top-down predictions. These models nota-bly posit that a fast but coarse visual analysis involving magnocellular pathways helps to compute heuristic guesses regard-ing the identity and affective value of inputs, which are used to facilitate conscious visual recognition. Building on these new proposals, the present review stresses the need to reconsider visual deficits in alcohol-use disorders as they might have cru-cial significance for core features of the pathology, such as attentional bias, loss of inhibitory control and emotion decoding impairments. Centrally, we suggest that individuals with severe alcohol-use disorders could present with magnocellular dam-age and we defend a dynamic explanation of the deficits. Rather than being restricted to high-level processes, deficits could start at early visual stages and then extend and potentially intensify during following steps due to reduced cerebral connec-tivity and dysfunctional cognitive/emotional regions. A new research agenda is specifically provided to test these hypotheses.

Socially anxious individuals perform better using low spatial frequency information to process facial expressions and objects

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

It is well known that socially anxious individuals show biased processing towards threatening faces and better performance with low spatial frequencies information (LSF). It is unclear whether this bias is confined to facial processing or can be extended to other types of information.

METHODS

Two experimental phases involving discrimination tasks considering neutral and angry facial expressions and everyday objects in two different spatial frequency conditions were conducted to compare the performance of "socially and non-socially anxious individuals".

RESULTS

Findings showed that highly socially anxious individuals (HSAi) were faster in decision processing for LSF neutral faces than LSF angry faces and responded more slowly to LSF angry faces than unfiltered angry faces. Moreover, they responded more quickly to LSF object images than low socially anxious individuals (LSAi).

LIMITATIONS

The fact that the participants were not diagnosed with social anxiety disorder limits the relevance of clinical findings. The study is further limited because it compared and contrasted only two emotional expressions and two frequency bands.

CONCLUSIONS

Study results showed that HSAi better process LSF neutral information and that this advantage is not limited to neutral faces alone, but extends across other domains.

Dispositional negativity, cognition, and anxiety disorders: An integrative translational neuroscience framework

When extreme, anxiety can become debilitating. Anxiety disorders, which often first emerge early in development, are common and challenging to treat, yet the underlying mechanisms have only recently begun to come into focus. Here, we review new insights into the nature and biological bases of dispositional negativity, a fundamental dimension of childhood temperament and adult personality and a prominent risk factor for the development of pediatric and adult anxiety disorders. Converging lines of epidemiological, neurobiological, and mechanistic evidence suggest that dispositional negativity increases the likelihood of psychopathology via specific neurocognitive mechanisms, including attentional biases to threat and deficits in executive control. Collectively, these observations provide an integrative translational framework for understanding the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in adults and youth and set the stage for developing improved intervention strategies.

Emotional faces guide the eyes in the absence of awareness

The ability to act quickly to a threat is a key skill for survival. Under awareness, threat-related emotional information, such as an angry or fearful face, has not only perceptual advantages but also guides rapid actions such as eye movements. Emotional information that is suppressed from awareness still confers perceptual and attentional benefits. However, it is unknown whether suppressed emotional information can directly guide actions, or whether emotional information has to enter awareness to do so. We suppressed emotional faces from awareness using continuous flash suppression and tracked eye gaze position. Under successful suppression, as indicated by objective and subjective measures, gaze moved towards fearful faces, but away from angry faces. Our findings reveal that: (1) threat-related emotional stimuli can guide eye movements in the absence of visual awareness; (2) threat-related emotional face information guides distinct oculomotor actions depending on the type of threat conveyed by the emotional expression.

Does emotion influence visual perception? Depends on how you look at it

One of the biggest challenges in the study of emotion-cognition interaction is addressing the question of whether and how emotions influence processes of perception as distinct from other higher-level cognitive processes. Most theories of emotion agree that an emotion episode begins with a sensory experience - such as a visual percept - that elicits a cascade of affective, cognitive, physiological, and/or behavioural responses (the ordering and inclusion of those latter components being forever debated). However, for decades, a subset of philosophers and scientists have suggested that the presumed perception → emotion relationship is in fact bidirectional, with emotion also altering the perceptual process. In the present review we reflect on the history and empirical support (or, some might argue, lack thereof) for the notion that emotion influences visual perception. We examine ways in which researchers have attempted to test the question, and the ways in which this pursuit is so difficult. As is the case with the ongoing debate about the cognitive penetrability of perception, we conclude that nothing is conclusive in the debate about the emotional penetrability of perception. We nonetheless don rose-coloured glasses as we look forward to the future of this research topic.

Visuocortical changes during a freezing-like state in humans

An adaptive response to threat requires optimized detection of critical sensory cues. This optimization is thought to be aided by freezing - an evolutionarily preserved defensive state of immobility characterized by parasympathetically mediated fear bradycardia and regulated by the amygdala-periaqueductal grey (PAG) circuit. Behavioral observations in humans and animals have suggested that freezing is also a state of enhanced visual sensitivity, particularly for coarse visual information, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. We induced a freezing-like state in healthy volunteers using threat of electrical shock and measured threat-related changes in both stimulus-independent (baseline) and stimulus-evoked visuocortical activity to low-vs. high-spatial frequency gratings, using functional MRI. As measuring immobility is not feasible in MRI environments, we used fear bradycardia and amygdala-PAG coupling in inferring a freezing-like state. An independent functional localizer and retinotopic mapping were used to assess the retinotopic specificity of visuocortical modulations. We found a threat-induced increase in baseline (stimulus-independent) visuocortical activity that was retinotopically nonspecific, which was accompanied by increased connectivity with the amygdala. A positive correlation between visuocortical activity and fear bradycardia (while controlling for sympathetic activation), and a concomitant increase in amygdala-PAG connectivity, confirmed the specificity of these findings for the parasympathetically dominated freezing-like state. Visuocortical responses to gratings were retinotopically specific, but did not differ between threat and safe conditions across participants. However, individuals who exhibited better discrimination of low-spatial frequency stimuli showed reduced stimulus-evoked V1 responses under threat. Our findings suggest that a defensive state of freezing involves an integration of preparatory defensive and perceptual changes which may be regulated by a common mechanism involving the amygdala.

Emotion and anxiety potentiate the way attention alters visual appearance

The ability to swiftly detect and prioritize the processing of relevant information around us is critical for the way we interact with our environment. Selective attention is a key mechanism that serves this purpose, improving performance in numerous visual tasks. Reflexively attending to sudden information helps detect impeding threat or danger, a possible reason why emotion modulates the way selective attention affects perception. For instance, the sudden appearance of a fearful face potentiates the effects of exogenous (involuntary, stimulus-driven) attention on performance. Internal states such as trait anxiety can also modulate the impact of attention on early visual processing. However, attention does not only improve performance; it also alters the way visual information appears to us, e.g. by enhancing perceived contrast. Here we show that emotion potentiates the effects of exogenous attention on both performance and perceived contrast. Moreover, we found that trait anxiety mediates these effects, with stronger influences of attention and emotion in anxious observers. Finally, changes in performance and appearance correlated with each other, likely reflecting common attentional modulations. Altogether, our findings show that emotion and anxiety interact with selective attention to truly alter how we see.

Humans' Relationship to Flowers as an Example of the Multiple Components of Embodied Aesthetics

This paper phenomenologically and qualitatively explores the relationship between humans and flowers as a relationship that throws light on the synergetic dynamics of embodied aesthetics. Its methods include qualitative description and thematic analyses of preferred flower types, as well as concept maps of the general term ‘flower’ by 120 students in Israel. The results revealed the interactive perceptual-compositional elements, as well as embodied, relational, and socially embedded elements of the aesthetic pleasure associated with flowers. Implications of this case study are generalized to understand the multiple and interactive components of embodied aesthetic experiences as a deep source of pleasure through interactive stimulation by and connection to the natural world.

Exogenous attention intensifies perceived emotion expressions

Spatial attention not only enhances early visual processing and improves performance but also alters phenomenology of basic perceptual features. However, in spite of extensive research on attention altering appearance, it is still unknown whether attention also intensifies perceived facial emotional expressions. We investigated the effect of exogenous attention on two categories of emotions, one positive (happy) and one negative (sad) in separate sessions. Exogenous attention was manipulated using peripheral cues followed by two faces varying in emotional intensity that were presented on either side of fixation. Participants were asked to report the location of the emotional face displaying higher intensity of emotion. At short cue-to-target interval [CTI, Experiment 1 (60 ms)], participants reported the cued emotional face as more intense in expression compared with the uncued face. However, at longer CTI [Experiment 2 (500 ms)], this effect was absent. Results show that exogenous attention enhances appearance of higher level features, such as emotional intensity, irrespective of valence. Further, two experiments investigated the mediating role of facial contrast as a possible underlying mechanism for the observed effect. Although the results show that higher contrast faces are judged as more in emotional intensity, spatial attention effects seem to be dependent on task instructions. Possible mechanisms underlying the attentional effects on emotion intensity are discussed.

Affective blindsight relies on low spatial frequencies

The human brain can process facial expressions of emotions rapidly and without awareness. Several studies in patients with damage to their primary visual cortices have shown that they may be able to guess the emotional expression on a face despite their cortical blindness. This non-conscious processing, called affective blindsight, may arise through an intact subcortical visual route that leads from the superior colliculus to the pulvinar, and thence to the amygdala. This pathway is thought to process the crude visual information conveyed by the low spatial frequencies of the stimuli. In order to investigate whether this is the case, we studied a patient (TN) with bilateral cortical blindness and affective blindsight. An fMRI paradigm was performed in which fearful and neutral expressions were presented using faces that were either unfiltered, or filtered to remove high or low spatial frequencies. Unfiltered fearful faces produced right amygdala activation although the patient was unaware of the presence of the stimuli. More importantly, the low spatial frequency components of fearful faces continued to produce right amygdala activity while the high spatial frequency components did not. Our findings thus confirm that the visual information present in the low spatial frequencies is sufficient to produce affective blindsight, further suggesting that its existence could rely on the subcortical colliculo-pulvino-amygdalar pathway.

Arousal amplifies biased competition between high and low priority memories more in women than in men: The role of elevated noradrenergic activity

Recent findings indicate that emotional arousal can enhance memory consolidation of goal-relevant stimuli while impairing it for irrelevant stimuli. According to one recent model, these goal-dependent memory tradeoffs are driven by arousal-induced release of norepinephrine (NE), which amplifies neural gain in target sensory and memory processing brain regions. Past work also shows that ovarian hormones modulate activity in the same regions thought to support NE's effects on memory, such as the amygdala, suggesting that men and women may be differentially susceptible to arousal's dual effects on episodic memory. Here, we aimed to determine the neurohormonal mechanisms that mediate arousal-biased competition processes in memory. In a competitive visuo-attention task, participants viewed images of a transparent object overlaid on a background scene and explicitly memorized one of these stimuli while ignoring the other. Participants then heard emotional or neutral audio-clips and provided a subjective arousal rating. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) analyses revealed that greater pre-to-post task increases in salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), a biomarker of noradrenergic activity, was associated with significantly greater arousal-enhanced memory tradeoffs in women than in men. These sex-dependent effects appeared to result from phasic and background noradrenergic activity interacting to suppress task-irrelevant representations in women but enhancing them in men. Additionally, in naturally cycling women, low ovarian hormone levels interacted with increased noradrenergic activity to amplify memory selectivity independently of emotion-induced arousal. Together these findings suggest that increased noradrenergic transmission enhances preferential consolidation of goal-relevant memory traces according to phasic arousal and ovarian hormone levels in women.

Here Comes Trouble: Prestimulus Brain Activity Predicts Enhanced Perception of Threat

Research on the perceptual prioritization of threatening stimuli has focused primarily on the physical characteristics and evolutionary salience of these stimuli. However, perceptual decision-making is strongly influenced by prestimulus factors such as goals, expectations, and prior knowledge. Using both event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging, we test the hypothesis that prior threat-related information and related increases in prestimulus brain activity play a key role in subsequent threat-related perceptual decision-making. After viewing threatening and neutral cues, participants detected perceptually degraded threatening and neutral faces presented at individually predetermined perceptual thresholds in a perceptual decision-making task. Compared with neutral cues, threat cues resulted in (1) improved perceptual sensitivity and faster detection of target stimuli; (2) increased late positive potential (LPP) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) activity, both of which are measures of emotional face processing; and (3) increased amygdala activity for subsequently presented threatening versus and neutral faces. Importantly, threat cue-related LPP and STS activity predicted subsequent improvement in the speed and precision of perceptual decisions specifically for threatening faces. Present findings establish the importance of top-down factors and prestimulus neural processing in understanding how the perceptual system prioritizes threatening information.

Inconsistent Effect of Arousal on Early Auditory Perception

Mood has been shown to influence cognitive performance. However, little is known about the influence of mood on sensory processing, specifically in the auditory domain. With the current study, we sought to investigate how auditory processing of neutral sounds is affected by the mood state of the listener. This was tested in two experiments by measuring masked-auditory detection thresholds before and after a standard mood-induction procedure. In the first experiment (N = 76), mood was induced by imagining a mood-appropriate event combined with listening to mood inducing music. In the second experiment (N = 80), imagining was combined with affective picture viewing to exclude any possibility of confounding the results by acoustic properties of the music. In both experiments, the thresholds were determined by means of an adaptive staircase tracking method in a two-interval forced-choice task. Masked detection thresholds were compared between participants in four different moods (calm, happy, sad, and anxious), which enabled differentiation of mood effects along the dimensions arousal and pleasure. Results of the two experiments were analyzed both in separate analyses and in a combined analysis. The first experiment showed that, while there was no impact of pleasure level on the masked threshold, lower arousal was associated with lower threshold (higher masked sensitivity). However, as indicated by an interaction effect between experiment and arousal, arousal did have a different effect on the threshold in Experiment 2. Experiment 2 showed a trend of arousal in opposite direction. These results show that the effect of arousal on auditory-masked sensitivity may depend on the modality of the mood-inducing stimuli. As clear conclusions regarding the genuineness of the arousal effect on the masked threshold cannot be drawn, suggestions for further research that could clarify this issue are provided.

Transient emotional events and individual affective traits affect emotion recognition in a perceptual decision-making task

Both affective states and personality traits shape how we perceive the social world and interpret emotions. The literature on affective priming has mostly focused on brief influences of emotional stimuli and emotional states on perceptual and cognitive processes. Yet this approach does not fully capture more dynamic processes at the root of emotional states, with such states lingering beyond the duration of the inducing external stimuli. Our goal was to put in perspective three different types of affective states (induced affective states, more sustained mood states and affective traits such as depression and anxiety) and investigate how they may interact and influence emotion perception. Here, we hypothesized that absorption into positive and negative emotional episodes generate sustained affective states that outlast the episode period and bias the interpretation of facial expressions in a perceptual decision-making task. We also investigated how such effects are influenced by more sustained mood states and by individual affect traits (depression and anxiety) and whether they interact. Transient emotional states were induced using movie-clips, after which participants performed a forced-choice emotion classification task with morphed facial expressions ranging from fear to happiness. Using a psychometric approach, we show that negative (vs. neutral) clips increased participants' propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful during several minutes. In contrast, positive movies biased classification toward happiness only for those clips perceived as most absorbing. Negative mood, anxiety and depression had a stronger effect than transient states and increased the propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful. These results provide the first evidence that absorption and different temporal dimensions of emotions have a significant effect on how we perceive facial expressions.

Influence of Temporal Expectations on Response Priming by Subliminal Faces

Unconscious processes are often assumed immune from attention influence. Recent behavioral studies suggest however that the processing of subliminal information can be influenced by temporal attention. To examine the neural mechanisms underlying these effects, we used a stringent masking paradigm together with fMRI to investigate how temporal attention modulates the processing of unseen (masked) faces. Participants performed a gender decision task on a visible neutral target face, preceded by a masked prime face that could vary in gender (same or different than target) and emotion expression (neutral or fearful). We manipulated temporal attention by instructing participants to expect targets to appear either early or late during the stimulus sequence. Orienting temporal attention to subliminal primes influenced response priming by masked faces, even when gender was incongruent. In addition, gender-congruent primes facilitated responses regardless of attention while gender-incongruent primes reduced accuracy when attended. Emotion produced no differential effects. At the neural level, incongruent and temporally unexpected primes increased brain response in regions of the fronto-parietal attention network, reflecting greater recruitment of executive control and reorienting processes. Congruent and expected primes produced higher activations in fusiform cortex, presumably reflecting facilitation of perceptual processing. These results indicate that temporal attention can influence subliminal processing of face features, and thus facilitate information integration according to task-relevance regardless of conscious awareness. They also suggest that task-congruent information between prime and target may facilitate response priming even when temporal attention is not selectively oriented to the prime onset time.

Losing Your Gut Feelings. Intuition in Depression

Whereas in basic research, intuition has become a topic of great interest, clinical research and depression research in specific have not applied to the topic of intuition, yet. This is astonishing because a well-known phenomenon during depression is that patients have difficulties to judge and decide. In contrast to healthy individuals who take most daily life decisions intuitively (Kahneman, 2011), depressed individuals seem to have difficulties to come to fast and adaptive decisions. The current article pursues three goals. First, our aim is to establish the hypothesis that intuition is impaired in depression against the background of influential theoretical accounts as well as empirical evidence from basic and clinical research. The second aim of the current paper is to provide explanations for recent findings on the depression-intuition interplay and to present directions for future research that may help to broaden our understanding of decision difficulties in depression. Third, we seek to propose ideas on how therapeutic interventions can support depressed individuals in taking better decisions. Even though our knowledge regarding this topic is still limited, we will tentatively launch the idea that an important first step may be to enhance patients' access to intuitions. Overall, this paper seeks to introduce the topic of intuition to clinical research on depression and to hereby set the stage for upcoming theory and practice.

Fear Similarly Alters Perceptual Estimates of and Actions over Gaps

Previous research has demonstrated an influence of one's emotional state on estimates of spatial layout. For example, estimates of heights are larger when the viewer is someone typically afraid of heights (trait fear) or someone who, in the moment, is experiencing elevated levels of fear (state fear). Embodied perception theories have suggested that such a change in perception occurs in order to alter future actions in a manner that reduces the likelihood of injury. However, other work has argued that when acting, it is important to have access to an accurate perception of space and that a change in conscious perception does not necessitate a change in action. No one has yet investigated emotional state, perceptual estimates, and action performance in a single paradigm. The goal of the current paper was to investigate whether fear influences perceptual estimates and action measures similarly or in a dissociable manner. In the current work, participants either estimated gap widths (Experiment 1) or were asked to step over gaps (Experiment 2) in a virtual environment. To induce fear, the gaps were placed at various heights up to 15 meters. Results showed an increase in gap width estimates as participants indicated experiencing more fear. The increase in gap estimates was mirrored in participants' stepping behavior in Experiment 2; participants stepped over fewer gaps when experiencing higher state and trait fear and, when participants actually stepped, they stepped farther over gap widths when experiencing more fear. The magnitude of the influence of fear on both perception and action were also remarkably similar (5.3 and 3.9 cm, respectively). These results lend support to embodied perception claims by demonstrating an influence on action of a similar magnitude as seen on estimates of gap widths.

Emotional modulation of interval timing and time perception

Like other senses, our perception of time is not veridical, but rather, is modulated by changes in environmental context. Anecdotal experiences suggest that emotions can be powerful modulators of time perception; nevertheless, the functional and neural mechanisms underlying emotion-induced temporal distortions remain unclear. Widely accepted pacemaker-accumulator models of time perception suggest that changes in arousal and attention have unique influences on temporal judgments and contribute to emotional distortions of time perception. However, such models conflict with current views of arousal and attention suggesting that current models of time perception do not adequately explain the variability in emotion-induced temporal distortions. Instead, findings provide support for a new perspective of emotion-induced temporal distortions that emphasizes both the unique and interactive influences of arousal and attention on time perception over time. Using this framework, we discuss plausible functional and neural mechanisms of emotion-induced temporal distortions and how these temporal distortions may have important implications for our understanding of how emotions modulate our perceptual experiences in service of adaptive responding to biologically relevant stimuli.

The beneficial and detrimental effects of major depression on intuitive decision-making

Intuitions play a central role in everyday life decision-making but little is known regarding this capacity during depression. Thus, in Study 1, N = 39 depressed in-patients completed two well-established tasks, assessing intuitions of visual and semantic coherence. In the semantic coherence task, patients judged whether presented words triads were coherent (e.g. SALT DEEP FOAM, related to SEA) or not (e.g. DREAM BALL BOOK, no denominator). In the visual coherence task, patients judged whether blurred pictures depicted real-life objects (coherent) or not (incoherent). Results showed that higher depressive symptomatology was associated with impaired intuitions of semantic coherence but with enhanced intuitions of visual coherence. In Study 2, visual coherence intuitions of depressed patients (n = 27) were compared to healthy control participants (n = 30). Depressed patients outperformed the healthy control subjects in the visual coherence task. This pattern of findings shows both detrimental and beneficial decisional consequences of depression.

Beta-adrenergic Blockade at Memory Encoding, but Not Retrieval, Decreases the Subjective Sense of Recollection

Humans remember emotional events not only better but also exhibit a qualitatively distinct recollective experience-that is, emotion intensifies the subjective vividness of the memory, the sense of reliving the event, and confidence in the accuracy of the memory [Phelps, E. A., & Sharot, T. How (and why) emotion enhances the subjective sense of recollection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 147-152, 2008]. Although it has been demonstrated that activation of the beta-adrenergic system, linked to increases in stress hormone levels and physiological arousal, mediates enhanced emotional memory accuracy, the mechanism underlying the increased subjective sense of recollection is unknown. Behavioral evidence suggests that increased arousal associated with emotional events, either at encoding or retrieval, underlies their increased subjective sense of recollection. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, we showed that reducing arousal at encoding through oral intake of 80-mg of the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol decreases the subjective sense of recollection for both negative and neutral stimuli 24 hr later. In contrast, administration of propranolol before memory retrieval did not alter the subjective sense of recollection. These results suggest that the neurohormonal changes underlying increased arousal at the time of memory formation, rather than the time of memory retrieval, modulate the subjective sense of recollection.

Cerebral Correlates of Emotional and Action Appraisals During Visual Processing of Emotional Scenes Depending on Spatial Frequency: A Pilot Study

Visual processing of emotional stimuli critically depends on the type of cognitive appraisal involved. The present fMRI pilot study aimed to investigate the cerebral correlates involved in the visual processing of emotional scenes in two tasks, one emotional, based on the appraisal of personal emotional experience, and the other motivational, based on the appraisal of the tendency to action. Given that the use of spatial frequency information is relatively flexible during the visual processing of emotional stimuli depending on the task’s demands, we also explored the effect of the type of spatial frequency in visual stimuli in each task by using emotional scenes filtered in low spatial frequency (LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF). Activation was observed in the visual areas of the fusiform gyrus for all emotional scenes in both tasks, and in the amygdala for unpleasant scenes only. The motivational task induced additional activation in frontal motor-related areas (e.g. premotor cortex, SMA) and parietal regions (e.g. superior and inferior parietal lobules). Parietal regions were recruited particularly during the motivational appraisal of approach in response to pleasant scenes. These frontal and parietal activations, respectively, suggest that motor and navigation processes play a specific role in the identification of the tendency to action in the motivational task. Furthermore, activity observed in the motivational task, in response to both pleasant and unpleasant scenes, was significantly greater for HSF than for LSF scenes, suggesting that the tendency to action is driven mainly by the detailed information contained in scenes. Results for the emotional task suggest that spatial frequencies play only a small role in the evaluation of unpleasant and pleasant emotions. Our preliminary study revealed a partial distinction between visual processing of emotional scenes during identification of the tendency to action, and during identification of personal emotional experiences. It also illustrates flexible use of the spatial frequencies contained in scenes depending on their emotional valence and on task demands.

The neurobiology of dispositional negativity and attentional biases to threat: Implications for understanding anxiety disorders in adults and youth

When extreme, anxiety can become debilitating. Anxiety disorders, which often first emerge early in development, are common and challenging to treat, yet the neurocognitive mechanisms that confer increased risk have only recently begun to come into focus. Here we review recent work highlighting the importance of neural circuits centered on the amygdala. We begin by describing dispositional negativity, a core dimension of childhood temperament and adult personality and an important risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders and other kinds of stress-sensitive psychopathology. Converging lines of epidemiological, neurophysiological, and mechanistic evidence indicate that the amygdala supports stable individual differences in dispositional negativity across the lifespan and contributes to the etiology of anxiety disorders in adults and youth. Hyper-vigilance and attentional biases to threat are prominent features of the anxious phenotype and there is growing evidence that they contribute to the development of psychopathology. Anatomical studies show that the amygdala is a hub, poised to govern attention to threat via projections to sensory cortex and ascending neuromodulatory systems. Imaging and lesion studies demonstrate that the amygdala plays a key role in selecting and prioritizing the processing of threat-related cues. Collectively, these observations provide a neurobiologically-grounded framework for understanding the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in adults and youth and set the stage for developing improved intervention strategies.