Neural competition for processing resources in visual cortex with emotional distractors

该项目的总体目标是揭示前景任务和情绪竞争者之间在早期视觉皮质中竞争处理资源的神经动力学。正如《爱因里希东山报》所提到的那样，越来越清楚的是，冷认知和热情绪之间的区别不再是可持续的，因为这两个过程相互作用，甚至相互影响。在授予的第一阶段，我们主要集中在我们的分心范式上，以揭示时间动力学。在后续阶段，我们计划将重点放在新开发的刺激技术上，这些技术将(A)允许我们通过同时呈现情绪和中性复杂图像来直接将它们置于竞争中，并操纵空间注意，以及(B)在观察者没有意识到定期呈现的情绪刺激的情况下，研究被提议的对情绪刺激的注意资源分配的自动性。此外，我们打算研究大细胞通路在注意-情绪相互作用中的作用。在项目结束时，我们有信心为理解人类视觉皮质中自上而下的引导注意力和自下而上的驱动注意力之间的竞争性相互作用贡献重要的新知识。高影响力出版物的数量证明了人们对我们创新方法工作的极大兴趣。此外，越来越多的研究小组使用我们同时呈现中性和情绪刺激的方法来揭示真实竞争条件下的基本神经机制。

The overall aim oft the project is to uncover neural dynamics of the competition for processing resources in early visual cortex between a foreground task and emotional competitors. As mentioned in the Einrichtungsantrag it has become increasingly clear that the distinction between cold cognition and hot emotion is no longer sustainable because both processes interact and even influence each other. In the first period of the grant we were mainly focusing on our distraction paradigm to uncover the temporal dynamics. In the follow-up period we plan to focus on newly developed stimulation techniques that will (a) allow us to directly set emotional and neutral complex images into competition by presenting them simultaneously and to manipulate spatial attention, and (b) to investigate the proposed automaticity of attentional resource deployment to emotional stimuli under conditions that observers are unaware of a regularly presented emotional stimulus. Further, we intend to investigate the role of the magnocellular pathway in attention-emotion interactions. At the end of the project we are confident to contribute significant new knowledge for an understanding of the competitive interactions between top-down guided and bottom-up driven attention in human visual cortex. The great interest in our work with our innovative approach is documented by the number of high-impact publications. Further, more and more research groups use our method of simultaneous presentation of neutral an emotional stimuli for their work to uncover basic neural mechanisms under conditions of real competition.