NEURAL CORRELATES OF AFFECTIVE PRIMACY

情感首因是指情感反应不依赖于认知中介，因此情感评价和认知评价在一定程度上依赖于具有不同行为动态的功能独立的信息加工流。人们普遍认为，情感信息处理被赋予了特殊的特征：它在很大程度上是预先注意/自动的，可以发生在意识之外，在对更一般的认知和知觉特征进行评估之前。情感处理的这些特征可以称为情感自动性。本提案的主要目的是通过测试以下假设，应用功能磁共振成像（MRI）来检查情感自动性的神经基础：1)情感刺激而非神经刺激维度的知觉加工独立于注意资源分配完成；2)对情感显著性刺激而非中性刺激的神经反应先于知觉知觉而独立于知觉知觉产生；3)对情感显著性刺激的神经反应支持无知觉的情感辨别。

Affective primacy refers to the notion that affective reactions are not dependent upon cognitive mediation, and thus affective and cognitive evaluations are to some degree dependent on functionally independent information processing streams with different behavioral dynamics. It is generally thought that affective information processing is endowed with special features: It is largely preattentive/automatic, can occur outside of awareness and prior to the appraisal of more general cognitive and perceptual features. These features of affective processing may be referred to as affective automaticity. The primary aim of this proposal is to apply functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the neural basis of affective automaticity by testing the following hypotheses: 1) Perceptual processing of affective but not neural stimulus dimensions is accomplished independent of attentional resource allocation, 2) Neural responses to affectively significant but not neutral stimuli are evoked prior to and independent of perceptual awareness, and 3) Neural responses to affectively significant stimuli support affective discriminations without awareness.