Spatial and Temporal Mechanisms of Affect-Biased Attention

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It is well known that we continuously filter incoming sensory information, selectively allocating attention to what is important to us and suppressing distracting or irrelevant information (for review see Cosmelli, 2009). Recent evidence has further shown that we tune our attentional filters to better perceive emotionally important aspects of the environment (Todd, Cunningham et al., 2012),and experience them with a heightened perceptual vividness relative to mundane stimuli (Todd, Talmi et al., 2012). Yet our current understanding of affectively biased attention in humans is hampered by lack of understanding of the basic neural processes involved in selective attention toward affectively significant aspects of the world. The goal of the present study is to better understand affective biases in two specific cognitive processes: selective attention and time perception. The proposed research program will combine electrophysiology with genotyping for targeted polymorphisms, or common genetic variations, to probe the influence of specific neurochemicals on distinct neuronal mechanisms underlying affectively driven selective attention in humans. It aims to test the overall predictions that the availability of each of these neurochemicals, as indexed by an individual’s genotype, influences distinct aspects of affectively biased attention subserved by distinct neural mechanisms (e.g., biased competition). Using the tools of genotyping with electrophysiology in humans can provide a crucial window into the influence of neurochemicals on electrophysiological mechanisms of affectively biased attention, allowing to better understand this fundamental aspect of human cognition involving selective perception of emotionally important aspects of the world.