Effects of selective attention on threat-related values of emotional faces with and without awareness
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1
Geneva University Hospital (HUG), Switzerland
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2
University of Geneva, Switzerland
Neuroimaging studies have investigated processing of consciously detected emotional faces under conditions of focused or averted spatial attention, yielding contradictory results. Furthermore, the effects of selective attention on emotional face processing when the stimuli are not consciously detected remain unclear. To study the electrophysiological correlates of facial emotion processing for target vs. non-target, and conscious vs. non-conscious faces, we performed a backward-masking, selective attention task (simple reaction time) in which participants were asked to detect positive (happy and neutral) or negative (fearful and angry) emotional faces, presented either subliminally (17 ms plus 283 ms of mask) or supraliminally (283 ms plus 17 ms of mask) at the center of a screen. On half the occasions, targets were positive stimuli, while on the other half targets were negative. A 256-channel surface EEG recording was performed in 22 healthy right-handed adults (11 males) while they carried out this task. Results showed that negative emotions elicited a greater N170 than positive ones especially over the right temporal middle areas. Moreover, this component was sensitive to targets compared to non targets only for negative emotions at both subliminal and supraliminal levels over left temporal and temporo-occipital regions. At the same latency, the right hemisphere differentiated conscious from unconscious processing independent of emotional valence. These results lend further support to the fact that threat-related value expressions (anger or fear) tend to attract more attention than neutral or positive ones even in absence of awareness at an early stage of processing. Competition for attention thus appears to be biased towards negative emotional expressions.
Keywords:
Awareness,
EEG
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Consciousness and Awareness
Citation:
Del Zotto
M,
Franchini
M,
Legrand
LB and
Pegna
AJ
(2011). Effects of selective attention on threat-related values of emotional faces with and without awareness.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00049
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Received:
15 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
25 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Marzia Del Zotto, Geneva University Hospital (HUG), Geneva, Switzerland, marzia.delzotto@hcuge.ch