Abstract
The capture of exogenous attention by negative stimuli has been interpreted as adaptive for survival in a diverse and changing environment. In the present paper, we investigate the neural responses towards two discrete negative emotions with different biological meanings, disgust and fear, and its potential relationships with heart rate variability (HRV) as an index of emotional regulation. With that aim, 30 participants performed a digit categorization task while fear, disgust and neutral distractor pictures were presented. Resting HRV at baseline, behavioral responses, and event-related potentials were recorded. Whereas P1 amplitudes were highest to fear distractors, the disgust stimulation led to augmented P2 amplitudes compared to the rest of distractors. Interestingly, increased N2 amplitudes were also found to disgust distractors, but only in high HRV participants. Neural source estimation data point to the involvement of the insula in this exogenous attentional response to disgust. Additionally, disgust distractors provoked longer reaction times than fear and neutral distractors in the high HRV group. Present findings are interpreted in evolutionary terms suggesting that exogenous attention is captured by negative stimuli following a different time course for fear and disgust. Possible HRV influences on neural mechanisms underlying exogenous attention are discussed considering the potential important role of this variable in emotional regulation processes.
Highlights
To process the great amount of sensorial stimulation that continuously surrounds the individual a fast and precise brain selection is required in order to identify relevant signals from the environment such as those are important for survival to face them with an appropriate action (e.g.,[1])
We have previously shown that startle and HR responses during fear and disgust pictures are modulated by vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV)
The interaction between emotional distractor and HRV was significant for reaction times (RTs) [F(1.82,50.85) = 5.419, p = .009, η2 = .162] but not for error rates [F(1.91,53.53) = .336, p = .706]
Summary
To process the great amount of sensorial stimulation that continuously surrounds the individual a fast and precise brain selection is required in order to identify relevant signals from the environment such as those are important for survival to face them with an appropriate action (e.g.,[1]). Growing experimental evidence coming from both electrophysiological [2,3,4,5,6,7] and behavioral studies [8,9,10,11] has consistently shown that threatening information is capable to efficiently attract attentional resources in a rapid and automatic way (i.e., exogenous attention) when these stimuli appeared as distractors in a given visual task (for a review see [12]). Brain and heart interactions to survive threat
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