Contextual guidance of attention by emotional information

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

My lab's research investigates the neurocognitive processes by which emotion and personal experience tune selective attention, action, and memory. Selective attention is the process by which we tune our sensory systems to the environment so that what is most relevant reaches awareness and determines action. Recently, classic models parsing attention into top-down (controlled guidance by explicit task demands) and bottom up (automatic guidance by stimulus features) processes have been challenged. Current models emphasize multiple routes which individual's history can guide attention, often outside of awareness. My own empirical and theoretical contributions, focusing on the role of emotional history in guiding attention at multiple time scales, have played an influential role in that dialogue. The research proposed here is guided by the overarching hypothesis that personal history and context influence how emotional salience interacts with other implicit sources of attentional guidance (e.g., expectation) within a dynamic priority space. The studies described in this proposal, which comprise two distinct lines of research, are representative of this broad approach. Our methods include fMRI, EEG, , formal modeling, and behavioral measures to predict how emotional salience will dynamically guide attention and action in distinct contexts. Here I propose two lines of research. The goal of the first is to test hypotheses about mechanisms by which prediction vs. emotional/motivational relevance guide attention. Here we will employ computational modeling and psychophysical techniques to examine how these factors dynamically influence attention as specific stimulus features come to be associated with threat of punishment (aversive bursts of white noise) or promise of monetary reward. Such research will have high value in industry and professional training where there is a need to predict attentional deployment in complex and emotion-laden environments. The second builds on the discovery that effects of emotional context (emotional information in the environment) on the ability to locate spatial targets depends on the sensory modality of the information. This line of research will use fMRI to examine the effects of emotion on spatial perception. Here we will identify the neural pathways (e.g., early vs. late sensory cortices) contributing to the ability to effectively localize objects when integrating information from sources in same vs. different sensory modalities in the presence of emotion. This research will provide crucial information on the impact of emotional distraction through multiple senses on performance of actions requiring precise spatial attention, and determine how these effects are mediated by specific neural pathways. Such findings will be relevant to training of professionals, such as first responders and healthcare professionals, functioning in high arousal situations.