Project 3: Attention to threat: Motivation and Memory

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We have hypothesized that increased attention to motivationally relevant stimuli, in the absence of an instructional or task manipulation, represents a type of 'natural selective attention', in which cues that activate motivational systems naturally arouse and direct attention (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1997). In this project, the hypothesis that natural selective attention is primitively associated to defensive activation is explored. According to this hypothesis, novel stimuli activate primitive motivational circuits mediating reactions to threat (defensive activation), initiating a series of sensory and motor reflexes with specific information processing and preparatory functions. Previous studies have confirmed that viewing unpleasant pictures prompts heightened attention and memory, as measured by classical measures of orienting and brain potentials; similar responses are found when attention is selectively directed to stimuli by instruction or task-relevance. In this project, we assess reflexive psychophysiological and neural activity as participants select and process relevant stimuli from the sensory array. In Specific aim #1, we explore the relationship between motivated and instructed attention, determining whether instructed attention to non-motivationally relevant stimuli (i.e. neutral) prompts similar orienting responses, neural activity, and memory performance as found in motivated attention. In Specific Aim #2, we explore the extent to which aversive stimuli are naturally selected for processing when multiple cues are presented in time or space, with the hypothesis that aversive stimuli are naturally selected for enhanced processing. In each series, psychophysiological measures of orienting, brain measures of reactivity (i.e. EEG, BOLD), and memory performance are assessed. Taken together, this research will advance our understanding of the relationship between motivation and attention/memory, provide methods for assessing disorders of these processes in clinical populations, and illuminate the utility of instructed attention in therapeutic settings.