Early cortical facilitation for emotionally arousing targets during the attentional blink.

Andreas Keil,Sabine Heim,Niklas Ihssen

doi:10.1186/1741-7007-4-23

Abstract

BackgroundThe present study aimed to investigate the time course of electrocortical facilitation for affectively arousing written words during the so-called 'attentional blink' (AB) period in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. The AB refers to a period of reduced awareness for second-target stimuli following a first target by an interval of about 200–500 ms. Pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant written verbs were used as second targets in an 8.6-Hz RSVP paradigm that contained affectively neutral words as distractors. Replicating and extending behavioral studies, we expected that emotional second targets would be associated with better identification accuracy and greater electrocortical activity, compared with neutral targets.ResultsThe steady-state visual evoked potential was recorded using 129 scalp electrodes. The time-varying energy at the presentation frequency of 8.6 Hz was extracted as a continuous measure of electrocortical activity related to the RSVP stream. Behavioral data showed that at an inter-target interval of 232 ms, the report for emotionally arousing (pleasant and unpleasant) words was more accurate than for neutral control words. This result was mirrored by the electrocortical response at posterior sensors, which showed rapid amplitude enhancement (120–270 ms after T2 onset) for pleasant and unpleasant targets specifically.ConclusionThe present data suggest that identification facilitation for emotionally arousing target words in the AB is related to rapid enhancement of sensory processing. Affectively arousing information is preferentially selected at the level of early perceptual analysis, leading to facilitation at later stages of processing, including consolidation in working memory and visual awareness.

Highlights

The present study aimed to investigate the time course of electrocortical facilitation for affectively arousing written words during the so-called 'attentional blink' (AB) period in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task
The present study aimed to examine the time course of steadystate visual evoked potential (ssVEP) amplitude changes in response to the inter-target interval and emotional content of second targets in an AB paradigm
Behavioral results As expected, accuracy of first target report was very high, participants averaging above 90% correct across all conditions

Summary

Introduction

The present study aimed to investigate the time course of electrocortical facilitation for affectively arousing written words during the so-called 'attentional blink' (AB) period in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. In line with that notion, many authors have suggested that significant stimuli capture attention, leading to better performance and more accurate reporting for affectively arousing versus non-arousing exemplars [4] This is consistent with electrophysiological work showing that the amplitude of cortical responses is enhanced for affectively arousing visual stimuli at relatively early stages of processing, i.e., around 120–170 ms post-stimulus [5,6]. BMC Biology 2006, 4:23 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/4/23 feared stimuli (e.g., spiders or snakes) are detected more rapidly among neutral distractors than are non-feared elements These authors interpreted their findings as evidence for a parallel search process that serves the rapid detection of significant events. This procedure has been widely used in studies of affective picture viewing [e.g., [9]], and has been related to physiological and brain data [10]

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