NEURAL CORRELATES OF AFFECTIVE PRIMACY

情感至上是指情感反应不依赖于认知中介的概念，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力的功能独立的信息加工流程。人们普遍认为情感信息加工具有特殊的特征：它在很大程度上是前注意/自动的，可以在意识之外发生，在对更一般的认知和知觉特征进行评估之前进行。情感加工的这些特征可以被称为情感自动性。本研究的主要目的是通过检验以下假设来应用功能磁共振成像(MRI)来检验情感自动性的神经基础：1)对情感而不是神经刺激维度的知觉加工是独立于注意资源分配完成的；2)对有情感意义但不是中性刺激的神经反应是在知觉意识之前被诱发的，并且是独立于知觉知觉的；3)对情感有意义刺激的神经反应在没有意识的情况下支持情感区分。

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.