Diverse effects of emotionally salient stimuli on brain and behaviour

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Emotion has a tremendous impact on our behaviour, sometimes enhancing performance, but other times contributing to human error in dangerous contexts. In addition, some thought processes and behaviours are remarkably resilient to emotional contexts. The effect that emotion has on brain and behaviour seems to depend on a number of factors that are poorly understood. The long-term goal of our research program is to determine how the human brain prioritizes and controls the influence of emotional information to optimize behavioural and cognitive performance. The proposed work will: a) determine the impact of emotional cues on visual awareness; b) distinguish and map neural and cognitive processes that are less susceptible to emotion and emotional distraction; and c) identify ways to exploit those neural and cognitive processes that are less susceptible to distraction. Because this research will identify factors associated with optimizing responses in emotionally charged environments, it will have implications for designing instruments and operating panels for equipment used in stressful environments (e.g., emergency response, defence, life-saving surgical procedures), and for training and selecting personnel that use this equipment.