Functional connectivity associated with individual differences on the emotional attentional blink task

Abstract

The emotional attentional blink (EAB) task has been used in numerous studies to examine attention capture by emotional stimuli. In this task, participants are instructed to detect a rotated image embedded within a rapid-serial-visual-presentation (RSVP) of images. When an emotional photograph (“critical distractor”) appears 200 msec before the target item, participants consistently show a dramatic impairment in target detection. However, the size of the EAB differs across participants. In the current study, we used resting-state fMRI to examine whether differences in functional connectivity were related to individual differences in the size of participants’ EAB effects. Twenty-five participants completed a resting-state fMRI scan and an EAB task in different experimental sessions. On each trial of the EAB task, a negative, erotic, or neutral distractor appeared either 200 msec or 800 msec prior to a rotated target image. Accuracy scores were calculated for each distractor type (negative, erotic, and neutral) and lag (200 msec vs. 800 msec). Values representing the negative EAB effect and the erotic EAB effect trials were then entered as covariates in seed-based analyses. The functional connectivity between the right orbitofrontal cortex and parietal regions were positively correlated with the size of both the negative and erotic EAB effects. The erotic EAB was also associated with the functional connectivity between the right orbitofrontal cortex and left middle frontal gyrus.