Abstract
Brain regions that process affect are strongly connected with visual regions, but the functional consequences of this structural organization have been relatively unexplored. How does the momentary affect of an observer influence perception? We induced either pleasant or unpleasant affect in participants and then recorded their neural activity using magnetoencephalography while they completed an object recognition task. We hypothesized, and found, that affect influenced the speed of object recognition by modulating the speed and amplitude of evoked responses in occipitotemporal cortex and regions important for representing affect. Furthermore, affect modulated functional interactions between affective and perceptual regions early during perceptual processing. These findings indicate that affect can serve as an important contextual influence on object recognition processes.
Highlights
Perception is a proactive process influenced by the state and history of the perceiver
The experiment consisted of alternating affect induction periods, during which participants were presented with affectively-charged images and music, and object recognition periods, during which participants completed the object recognition task
Positive affect induction periods elicited an increase in positive valence (t(9) = 5.57, p-value < 0.001) while negative affect induction periods elicited an increase in negative valence (t(9) = −4.50, p = 0.001)
Summary
Perception is a proactive process influenced by the state and history of the perceiver This includes the perceiver’s affect, such as his or her subjective feelings of valence (pleasure/displeasure) and arousal. We tested the hypothesis that valence would modulate the speed of object recognition, and that this speeded perception would be mediated by faster evoked responses in visual cortex and in affective circuitry positioned to provide top-down control of perception. MEG has good spatial resolution and exceptional temporal resolution, allowing us to examine both the magnitude and latency of region-specific evoked activity To our knowledge, this is the first time these techniques have been used to study affective modulation of object perception. We predicted that this difference in response time would correspond to differences in the latency of stimulus-evoked responses at the neural level
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