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There is substantial evidence demonstrating that emotional information influences perception. Yet across studies, findings of how it does so have been highly inconsistent. In particular, emotional context (task-unrelated emotional information in the environment) has a variable influence on spatial perceptual accuracy, sometimes improving and sometimes impairing the ability to localize objects. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the heterogenous nature of emotional influences on target localization is influenced by the specific combination of sensory modalities used in the task. In the present series of experiments, we used a cross-modal localization task to identify how emotional context influences the accuracy of spatial perception. By presenting nonemotional target stimuli alongside emotional nonspatial distractor items (facial expressions or vocalizations), we were able to systematically investigate how emotional stimuli presented to individual sensory modalities acted to modulate spatial perception at distinct stages of perception and action. In three separate experiments, distractor items were presented prior to or during target presentation or after presentation during the localization response. Intramodal emotional distractors influenced localization accuracy when they overlapped in timing with targets, and the direction of this effect was both modality and valence specific (Experiment I). Additionally, targeted contrasts revealed that auditory but not visual emotional distractors influenced localization of visual targets when presented during the behavioral response, with negative cues improving localization accuracy compared to neutral or positive cues (Experiment II). We suggest such effects reflect distinct patterns of unimodal versus multimodal processing in brain regions involved in early versus late stages of perceptual processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional appraisal in humans is often considered a centrally mediated process by which sensory signals, void of emotional meaning, are assessed by integrative brain structures steps removed from raw sensation. We review emerging evidence that the emotional value of the environment is coded by nonvisual sensory systems as early as the sensory receptors and that these signals inform the emotional state of an organism independent of sensory cortical processes. We further present evidence for cross-species conservation of sensory projections to central emotion-processing brain regions. Based on this, we argue not only that emotional appraisal is a decentralized process, but that all human emotional experience may reflect the sensory experience of our ancestors., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Recent advances in our understanding of information states in the human brain have opened a new window into the brain's representation of emotion. While emotion was once thought to constitute a separate domain from cognition, current evidence suggests that all events are filtered through the lens of whether they are good or bad for us. Focusing on new methods of decoding information states from brain activation, we review growing evidence that emotion is represented at multiple levels of our sensory systems and infuses perception, attention, learning, and memory. We provide evidence that the primary function of emotional representations is to produce unified emotion, perception, and thought (e.g., "That is a good thing") rather than discrete and isolated psychological events (e.g., "That is a thing. I feel good"). The emergent view suggests ways in which emotion operates as a fundamental feature of cognition, by design ensuring that emotional outcomes are the central object of perception, thought, and action.

Anecdotal reports that time "flies by" or "slows down" during emotional events are supported by evidence that the motivational relevance of stimuli influences subsequent duration judgments. Yet it is unknown whether the subjective quality of events as they unfold is altered by motivational relevance. In a novel paradigm, we measured the subjective experience of moment-to-moment visual perception. Participants judged the temporal smoothness of high-approach positive images (desserts), negative images (e.g., of bodily mutilation), and neutral images (commonplace scenes) as they faded to black. Results revealed approach-motivated blurring, such that positive stimuli were judged as smoother and negative stimuli as choppier relative to neutral stimuli. Participants' ratings of approach motivation predicted perceived fade smoothness after we controlled for low-level stimulus features. Electrophysiological data indicated that approach-motivated blurring modulated relatively rapid perceptual activation. These results indicate that stimulus value influences subjective temporal perceptual acuity; approach-motivating stimuli elicit perception of a "blurred" frame rate characteristic of speeded motion.

In this commentary we focus on individual differences in proposed mechanisms underlying arousal-based enhancement of prioritized stimuli. We discuss the potential of genotyping studies for examining effects of noradrenergic processes on stimulus prioritization in humans and stress the importance of potential individual differences in the activity of specific receptor subtypes in hotspot processes proposed by the GANE model.

Emotionally salient aspects of the world are experienced with greater perceptual vividness than mundane ones; however, such emotionally enhanced vividness (EEV) may be experienced to different degrees for different people. We examined whether BOLD activity associated with a deletion variant of the ADRA2b gene coding for the α2b adrenoceptor modulates EEV in humans. Relative to noncarriers, ADRA2b deletion carriers showed higher levels of perceptual vividness, with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) showing greater modulation by EEV. Deletion carriers were also more sensitive to the featural salience of the images, suggesting a more pervasive role of norepinephrine in perceptual encoding. Path analysis revealed that, whereas a simple model by which the amygdala modulated the lateral occipital complex best characterized EEV-related activity in noncarriers, contributions of an additional VMPFC pathway best characterized deletion carriers. Thus, common norepinephrine-related neurogenetic differences enhance the subjective vividness of perceptual experience and its emotional enhancement., (Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/356506-11$15.00/0.)

A deletion variant of the ADRA2B gene that codes for the α2b adrenoceptor has been linked to greater susceptibility to traumatic memory as well as attentional biases in perceptual encoding of negatively valenced stimuli. The goal of the present study was to examine whether emotional enhancements of memory associated with the ADRA2B deletion variant were predicted by encoding, as indexed by the subjectively perceived emotional salience (i.e., arousal) of events at the time of encoding. Genotyping was performed on 186 healthy young adults who rated positive, negative, and neutral scenes for level of emotional arousal and subsequently performed a surprise recognition memory task 1 week later. Experience of childhood trauma was also measured, as well as additional genetic variations associated with emotional biases and episodic memory. Results showed that subjective arousal was linked to memory accuracy and confidence for ADRA2B deletion carriers but not for non-carriers. Our results suggest that carrying the ADRA2B deletion variant enhances the relationship between arousal at encoding and subsequent memory for moderately arousing events., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

It is well known that we continuously filter incoming sensory information, selectively allocating attention to what is important while suppressing distracting or irrelevant information. Yet questions remain about spatiotemporal patterns of neural processes underlying attentional biases toward emotionally significant aspects of the world. One index of affectively biased attention is an emotional variant of an attentional blink (AB) paradigm, which reveals enhanced perceptual encoding for emotionally salient over neutral stimuli under conditions of limited executive attention. The present study took advantage of the high spatial and temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate neural activation related to emotional and neutral targets in an AB task. MEG data were collected while participants performed a rapid stimulus visual presentation task in which two target stimuli were embedded in a stream of distractor words. The first target (T1) was a number and the second (T2) either an emotionally salient or neutral word. Behavioural results replicated previous findings of greater accuracy for emotionally salient than neutral T2 words. MEG source analyses showed that activation in orbitofrontal cortex, characterized by greater power in the theta and alpha bands, and dorsolateral prefrontal activation were associated with successful perceptual encoding of emotionally salient relative to neutral words. These effects were observed between 250 and 550 ms, latencies associated with discrimination of perceived from unperceived stimuli. These data suggest that important nodes of both emotional salience and frontoparietal executive systems are associated with the emotional modulation of the attentional blink.

Emotionally arousing events reach awareness more easily and evoke greater visual cortex activation than more mundane events. Recent studies have shown that they are also perceived more vividly and that emotionally enhanced perceptual vividness predicts memory vividness. We propose that affect-biased attention (ABA) - selective attention to emotionally salient events - is an endogenous attentional system tuned by an individual's history of reward and punishment. We present the Biased Attention via Norepinephrine (BANE) model, which unifies genetic, neuromodulatory, neural and behavioural evidence to account for ABA. We review evidence supporting BANE's proposal that a key mechanism of ABA is locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) activity, which interacts with activity in hubs of affective salience networks to modulate visual cortex activation and heighten the subjective vividness of emotionally salient stimuli. We further review literature on biased competition and look at initial evidence for its potential as a neural mechanism behind ABA. We also review evidence supporting the role of the LC-NE system as a driving force of ABA. Finally, we review individual differences in ABA and memory including differences in sensitivity to stimulus category and valence. We focus on differences arising from a variant of the ADRA2b gene, which codes for the alpha2b adrenoreceptor as a way of investigating influences of NE availability on ABA in humans., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Emotionally enhanced memory and susceptibility to intrusive memories after trauma have been linked to a deletion variant (i.e., a form of a gene in which certain amino acids are missing) of ADRA2B, the gene encoding subtype B of the α2-adrenergic receptor, which influences norepinephrine activity. We examined in 207 participants whether variations in this gene are responsible for individual differences in affective influences on initial encoding that alter perceptual awareness. We examined the attentional blink, an attentional impairment during rapid serial visual presentation, for negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral target words. Overall, the attentional blink was reduced for emotional targets for ADRA2B-deletion carriers and noncarriers alike, which reveals emotional sparing (i.e., reduction of the attentional impairment for words that are emotionally significant). However, deletion carriers demonstrated a further, more pronounced emotional sparing for negative targets. This finding demonstrates a contribution of genetics to individual differences in the emotional subjectivity of perception, which in turn may be linked to biases in later memory.

Highly emotional events are associated with vivid "flashbulb" memories. Here we examine whether the flashbulb metaphor characterizes a previously unknown emotion-enhanced vividness (EEV) during initial perceptual experience. Using a magnitude estimation procedure, human observers estimated the relative magnitude of visual noise overlaid on scenes. After controlling for computational metrics of objective visual salience, emotional salience was associated with decreased noise, or heightened perceptual vividness, demonstrating EEV, which predicted later memory vividness. Event-related potentials revealed a posterior P2 component at ∼200 ms that was associated with both increased emotional salience and decreased objective noise levels, consistent with EEV. Blood oxygenation level-dependent response in the lateral occipital complex (LOC), insula, and amygdala predicted online EEV. The LOC and insula represented complimentary influences on EEV, with the amygdala statistically mediating both. These findings indicate that the metaphorical vivid light surrounding emotional memories is embodied directly in perceptual cortices during initial experience, supported by cortico-limbic interactions.

The affective biasing of attention is not typically considered to be a form of emotion regulation. In this article, we argue that 'affect-biased attention' - the predisposition to attend to certain categories of affectively salient stimuli over others - provides an important component of emotion regulation. Affect-biased attention regulates subsequent emotional responses by tuning one's filters for initial attention and subsequent processing. By reviewing parallel research in the fields of emotion regulation and affect-biased attention, as well as clinical and developmental research on individual differences in attentional biases, we provide convergent evidence that habitual affective filtering processes, tuned and re-tuned over development and situation, modulate emotional responses to the world. Moreover, they do so in a manner that is proactive rather than reactive., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The modulation of control processes by stimulus salience, as well as associated neural activation, changes over development. We investigated age-related differences in the influence of facial emotion on brain activation when an action had to be withheld, focusing on a developmental period characterized by rapid social-emotional and cognitive change. Groups of kindergarten and young school-aged children and a group of young adults performed a modified Go/Nogo task. Response cues were preceded by happy or angry faces. After controlling for task performance, left orbitofrontal regions discriminated trials with happy vs. angry faces in children but not in adults when a response was withheld, and this effect decreased parametrically with age group. Age-related changes in prefrontal responsiveness to facial expression were not observed when an action was required, nor did this region show age-related activation changes with the demand to withhold a response in general. Such results reveal age-related differences in prefrontal activation that are specific to stimulus valence and depend on the action required., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Understanding genetic contributions to individual differences in the capacity for emotional memory has tremendous implications for understanding normal human memory as well as pathological reactions to traumatic stress. Research in the last decade has identified genetic polymorphisms thought to influence cognitive/affective processes that may contribute to emotional memory capacity. In this paper, we review key polymorphisms linked to emotional and mnemonic processing and their influence on neuromodulator activity in the amygdala and other emotion-related structures. We discuss their potential roles in specific cognitive processes involved in memory formation, and review links between these genetic variants, brain activation, and specific patterns of attention, perception, and memory consolidation that may be linked to individual differences in memory vividness. Finally we propose a model predicting an influence of noradrenergic, serotonergic, and dopaminergic processes on emotional perception, as well as on memory consolidation and self-regulation. Outside of the laboratory, it is likely that real-life effects of arousal operate along a continuum that incorporates other "non-emotional" aspects of memory. For this reason we further discuss additional literature on genetic variations that influence general episodic memory processes, rather than being specific to emotional enhancement of memory. We conclude that specific neuromodulators contribute to an amygdala-driven memory system that is relatively involuntary, embodied, and sensorily vivid., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The present study investigated age-related differences in the amygdala and other nodes of face-processing networks in response to facial expression and familiarity. fMRI data were analyzed from 31 children (3.5-8.5 years) and 14 young adults (18-33 years) who viewed pictures of familiar (mothers) and unfamiliar emotional faces. Results showed that amygdala activation for faces over a scrambled image baseline increased with age. Children, but not adults, showed greater amygdala activation to happy than angry faces; in addition, amygdala activation for angry faces increased with age. In keeping with growing evidence of a positivity bias in young children, our data suggest that children find happy faces to be more salient or meaningful than angry faces. Both children and adults showed preferential activation to mothers' over strangers' faces in a region of rostral anterior cingulate cortex associated with self-evaluation, suggesting that some nodes in frontal evaluative networks are active early in development. This study presents novel data on neural correlates of face processing in childhood and indicates that preferential amygdala activation for emotional expressions changes with age.

Children's behavior problems may stem from ineffective cortical mechanisms for regulating negative emotions, and the success of interventions may depend on their impact on such mechanisms. We examined neurophysiological markers associated with emotion regulation in children comorbid for externalizing and internalizing problems before and after treatment. We hypothesized that treatment success would correspond with reduced ventral prefrontal activation, and increased dorsomedial prefrontal activation, at the time point of an event-related potential (ERP) associated with inhibitory control. Twenty-seven 8- to 12-year-old children (with usable data) were tested before and after a 14-week community-based treatment program and assessed as to improvement status. Fifteen 8- to 12-year-olds from the normal population (with usable data) were tested over the same interval. All children completed an emotion-induction go/no-go task while fitted with a 128-channel electrode net at each test session. ERP amplitudes, and estimates of cortical activation in prefrontal regions of interest, were measured at the peak of the "inhibitory" N2 and compared between improvers, nonimprovers, and nonclinical children. ERP amplitudes showed no group differences. However, improvers showed an overall reduction in ventral prefrontal activation from pretreatment to posttreatment, bringing them in line with nonclinical children, whereas ventral activation remained high for nonimprovers. Both improvers and nonimprovers showed high dorsal activation relative to nonclinical children. Supplementary analyses indicated that only ventral prefrontal regions, and only within the N2 time window, showed decreased activity from pre- to posttreatment, suggesting changes in regulatory processes rather than in overall emotional arousal. These cortically mediated changes may permit a reduction in the overengaged, rigid style of emotion regulation characteristic of children with behavior problems.

To date, little is known about the neural underpinnings of social-emotional processes in young children. The present study investigated the time course of children's ERP responses to facial expression and personal familiarity, and the effect of these variables on ERP measures of effortful attention in a Go-Nogo task. Dense-array EEG was collected from 48 4-6-year-old children who were presented with pictures of their mothers' and strangers' happy and angry faces. ERPs were scored following face presentation and following a subsequent cue signaling a Go or Nogo response. Responses to face presentation showed early perceptual components that were larger following strangers' faces, suggesting facilitated rapid processing of personally important faces. A mid-latency frontocentral negativity was greatest following angry mothers' faces, indicating increased attentional monitoring and/or recognition memory evoked by an angry parent. Finally a right-lateralized late positive component was largest following angry faces, suggesting extended processing of negatively valenced social stimuli in general. Following the Go-Nogo response cue, a right-lateralized mid-latency negativity thought to measure effortful attention was larger in Nogo than Go trials, and following angry than happy faces, possibly reflecting increased effortful control required in those conditions. The present study suggests that overlapping but differentiated networks for both rapid and elaborative processing of important socio-affective information are established by 4-6 years. Moreover, the extended spatial and temporal distribution of components suggests a pattern of response to social stimuli in which more rapid processes may index personal familiarity, whereas temporally extended processes are sensitive to affective valence on both familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Emotion regulation in adults may be mediated by frontal cortical activities that adjust attention in response to challenging emotions. We examined event-related potentials across emotional conditions to assess normative patterns and individual differences in cortical mechanisms of emotion regulation in 4-6-year-olds. The children viewed pictures of angry, neutral, and happy faces during a Go/No-go task. Angry faces generated the greatest (frontocentral) N2 amplitudes and fastest N2 latencies, and happy faces produced the smallest amplitudes and slowest latencies. Frontal electrodes showed larger N2s to angry faces in the Go condition. The P3b was also largest for angry faces. More fearful children showed faster latency N2s to angry faces. These results are interpreted in terms of early-developing mechanisms for regulating anxiety and processing emotional information.