Contextual guidance of attention by emotional information

我的实验室研究的是情绪和个人经历调节选择性注意力、行动和记忆的神经认知过程。选择性注意是我们根据环境调整感官系统的过程，从而使最相关的东西达到意识并决定行动。近年来，将注意力解析为自上而下（显性任务需求控制引导）和自下而上（刺激特征自动引导）的经典模型受到了挑战。目前的模型强调个人的历史可以引导注意力的多种途径，通常是在意识之外。我自己的经验和理论贡献，专注于情感历史在多个时间尺度上引导注意力的作用，在这种对话中发挥了重要作用。

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.