Interactions of Emotion and Attention in Perception

Abstract

Interactions between brain systems involved in emotion and attention have attracted a great deal of interest, as both may contribute to regulating behavior and awareness by enhancing the representation of sensory information relevant to the individual. This chapter reviews recent research derived from cognitive sciences and brain imaging that reveals a modulation of early perceptual pathways by emotional signals and suggests a crucial role for the amygdala in imposing direct feedback influences on sensory cortical areas that can boost perception and attention for emotionally relevant stimuli. While such emotional effects may arise in parallel to top-down influences mediated by attentional systems, a different task or context is likely to modulate the efficacy of such boosting, but such modulations still remain poorly known and debated. In addition, although emotional influences from the amygdala on perceptual processing have most often been studied with fear-related stimuli, similar effects might also arise for positive or arousing stimuli that are self-relevant.