Attention-emotion interactions: Investigating the affective consequences of selective attention

注意力和情感对人类生活的方方面面都很重要。在正常功能中，注意和情绪过程的相互作用指导感知，影响决策，并对认知控制和情绪自我调节至关重要。我们的生存，毫不夸张地说，取决于这些系统的正常运作。情感状态和情感显著性刺激会影响注意力分配，这一观点主要是基于这一证据而形成的。人们对注意力对情绪的影响知之甚少。最近一系列的行为研究结果表明，视觉注意力实际上可以对其他中性的物体和面孔产生情感反应。例如，忽略抽象的视觉模式（而不是关注它）会导致随后对该模式的情感贬值。这里提出的认知神经科学研究的目标是确定视觉注意如何影响情绪。一系列纯粹的认知行为研究将被用来揭示注意力对情绪反应影响的基本特征。一组补充的认知神经成像研究将使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来揭示大脑区域的网络，这些区域允许注意力和情感以这种方式共同运作。这一研究项目的结果有望使我们更好地理解负责注意力和情感之间相互作用的认知和神经机制，从而为解决这些系统受到疾病、神经系统疾病和中风影响时发生的功能损伤提供基础。

Attention and emotion are important for virtually every aspect of human life. In normal functioning, the interaction of attention and emotion processes guide perception, influence decision making, and are critical for cognitive control and emotional self-regulation. Our survival, quite literally, depends on proper functioning of these systems. The prevailing notion of how attention and emotion are related is guided primarily by the evidence that affective states and emotionally salient stimuli can impact the allocation of attention. Much less is known about the impact of attention on emotion. A recent series of behavioural results suggest that visual attention can in fact produce affective responses for otherwise neutral objects and faces. For example, ignoring an abstract visual pattern (versus attending to it) leads to a subsequent emotional devaluation of that pattern. The goal of the cognitive neuroscience research proposed here is to establish how visual attention impacts emotion. A series of purely cognitive-behavioural studies will be used to reveal the fundamental characteristics of the effects of attention on emotional responses. A complementary set of cognitive neuroimaging studies will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal the network of brain regions that allow attention and emotion to operate together in this way. The results of this program of research are expected to lead to a better understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms responsible for interactions between attention and emotion, and thereby provide a foundation for addressing impairments in function that occur when these systems are affected by illness, neurological disorders, and stroke.