Visual Attentional Bias Research Articles

Convergence of prefrontal and parietal anatomical projections in a connectional hub in the striatum

Visual attentional bias forms for rewarding and punishing stimuli in the environment. While this attentional bias is adaptive in healthy situations, it is maladaptive in disorders such as drug addiction or PTSD. In both these disorders, the ability to exert control over this attentional bias is associated with drug abstinence rates or reduced PTSD symptoms, indicating the interaction of visual attention, cognitive control, and stimulus association. The inferior parietal lobule (IPL) is central to attention, while the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for reward, cognitive control, and attention. Importantly, regions of the IPL and PFC commonly project to the rostral dorsal caudate (rdCaud) of the striatum. We propose an anatomical network architecture in which IPL projections converge with PFC projections in a connectional hub in the rdCaud, providing an anatomical substrate for the interaction of these projections and their competitive influence on striatal processing. To investigate this, we mapped the dense projections from the caudal IPL and prefrontal (dlPFC, vlPFC, OFC, dACC, and dmPFC) regions that project to the medial rdCaud with anatomical tract-tracing tracer injections in monkeys. These inputs converge in a precise site in the medial rdCaud, rostral to the anterior commissure. Small retrograde tracer injections confirmed these inputs to the medial rdCaud and showed that a proximal ventral striatal location has a very different pattern of cortical inputs. We next used human resting-state functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) to examine whether a striatal hub exists in the human medial rdCaud. Seed regions in the human medial rdCaud revealed cortical correlation maps similar to the monkey retrograde injection results. A subsequent analysis of these correlated cortical regions showed that their peak correlation within the striatum is in the medial rdCaud, indicating that this is a connectional hub. In contrast, this peak striatal correlation was not found in the ventral striatal location, suggesting that this site is not a connectional hub of cortical regions. Taken together, this work uses the precision of monkey anatomy to identify a connectional hub of IPL and PFC projections in the medial rdCaud. It also translates this anatomical precision to humans, demonstrating that, guided by anatomy, connectional hubs can be identified in humans with fcMRI. These connectional hubs provide more specific treatment targets for drug addiction, PTSD, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders involving the striatum.

Keeping an eye on pain: investigating visual attention biases in individuals with chronic pain using eye-tracking methodology.

Attentional biases to painful stimuli are evident in individuals with chronic pain, although the directional tendency of these biases (ie, toward or away from threat-related stimuli) remains unclear. This study used eye-tracking technology, a measure of visual attention, to evaluate the attentional patterns of individuals with and without chronic pain during exposure to injury-related and neutral pictures. Individuals with (N=51) and without chronic pain (N=62) completed a dot-probe task using injury-related and neutral pictures while their eye movements were recorded. Mixed-design analysis of variance evaluated the interaction between group (chronic pain, pain-free) and picture type (injury-related, neutral). Reaction time results showed that regardless of chronic pain status, participants responded faster to trials with neutral stimuli in comparison to trials that included injury-related pictures. Eye-tracking measures showed within-group differences whereby injury-related pictures received more frequent fixations and visits, as well as longer average visit durations. Between-group differences showed that individuals with chronic pain had fewer fixations and shorter average visit durations for all stimuli. An examination of how biases change over the time-course of stimulus presentation showed that during the late phase of attention, individuals with chronic pain had longer average gaze durations on injury pictures relative to pain-free individuals. The results show the advantage of incorporating eye-tracking methodology when examining attentional biases, and suggest future avenues of research.

Visual attentional bias for food in adolescents with binge-eating disorder

Evidence suggests that adults with binge-eating disorder (BED) are prone of having their attention interfered by food cues, and that food-related attentional biases are associated with calorie intake and eating disorder psychopathology. For adolescents with BED experimental evidence on attentional processing of food cues is lacking. Using eye-tracking and a visual search task, the present study examined visual orienting and disengagement processes of food in youth with BED. Eye-movement data and reaction times were recorded in 25 adolescents (12–20 years) with BED and 25 controls (CG) individually matched for sex, age, body mass index, and socio-economic status. During a free exploration paradigm, the BED group showed a greater gaze duration bias for food images than the CG. Groups did not differ in gaze direction biases. In a visual search task, the BED group showed a greater detection bias for food targets than the CG. Group differences were more pronounced for personally attractive than unattractive food images. Regarding clinical associations, only in the BED group the gaze duration bias for food was associated with increased hunger and lower body mass index, and the detection bias for food targets was associated with greater reward sensitivity. The study provided first evidence of an attentional bias to food in adolescents with BED. However, more research is needed for further specifying disengagement and orienting processes in adolescent BED, including overt and covert attention, and their prospective associations with binge-eating behaviors and associated psychopathology.

Brain dopamine and serotonin transporter binding are associated with visual attention bias for food in lean men.

In rodents, the striatal dopamine (DA) system and the (hypo)thalamic serotonin (5-HT) system are involved in the regulation of feeding behavior. In lean humans, little is known about the relationship between these brain neurotransmitter systems and feeding. We studied the relationship between striatal DA transporters (DAT) and diencephalic 5-HT transporters (SERT), behavioral tasks and questionnaires, and food intake. We measured striatal DAT and diencephalic SERT binding with [123I]FP-CIT SPECT in 36 lean male subjects. Visual attention bias for food (detection speed and distraction time) and degree of impulsivity were measured using response-latency-based computer tasks. Craving and emotional eating were assessed with questionnaires and ratings of hunger by means of VAS scores. Food intake was assessed through a self-reported online diet journal. Striatal DAT and diencephalic SERT binding negatively correlated with food detection speed (p = 0.008, r = -0.50 and p = 0.002, r = -0.57, respectively), but not with food distraction time, ratings of hunger, craving or impulsivity. Striatal DAT and diencephalic SERT binding did not correlate with free choice food intake, whereas food detection speed positively correlated with total caloric intake (p = 0.001, r = 0.60), protein intake (p = 0.01, r = 0.44), carbohydrate intake (p = 0.03, r = 0.39) and fat intake (p = 0.06, r = 0.35). These results indicate a role for the central 5-HT and DA system in the regulation of visual attention bias for food, which contributes to the motivation to eat, in non-obese, healthy humans. In addition, this study confirms that food detection speed, measured with the latency-based computer task, positively correlates with total food and macronutrient intake.

Alcohol-related visual cues impede the ability to process auditory information: Seeing but not hearing.

Studies of visual attention find that drinkers spend more time attending to images of alcohol-related stimuli compared to neutral images. It is believed that this attentional bias contributes to the maintenance of alcohol use. However, no research has examined the possibility that this bias of visual attention might actually impede the functioning of other modalities, such as the processing of accompanying auditory stimuli. This study aimed to determine if alcohol-related images engender greater sensory dominance than neutral images, such that processing accompanying information from another modality (audition) would be impeded. Drinkers who had an attentional bias to alcohol-related images performed a multisensory perception task that measured how alcohol-related versus neutral visual images affected their ability to detect and respond to simultaneously presented auditory signals. In accord with the hypothesis, compared with neutral images, the presentation of alcohol-related images impaired the ability to detect and respond to auditory signals. Increased dominance of the visual modality was demonstrated by more bimodal targets being misclassified as visual-only targets in the alcohol target condition compared with that of the neutral. Findings suggest that increased processing of alcohol-related stimuli may impede an individual's ability to encode and interpret information obtained from other sensory modalities.

Effects of craving behavioral intervention on neural substrates of cue-induced craving in Internet gaming disorder.

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is characterized by high levels of craving for online gaming and related cues. Since addiction-related cues can evoke increased activation in brain areas involved in motivational and reward processing and may engender gaming behaviors or trigger relapse, ameliorating cue-induced craving may be a promising target for interventions for IGD. This study compared neural activation between 40 IGD and 19 healthy control (HC) subjects during an Internet-gaming cue-reactivity task and found that IGD subjects showed stronger activation in multiple brain areas, including the dorsal striatum, brainstem, substantia nigra, and anterior cingulate cortex, but lower activation in the posterior insula. Furthermore, twenty-three IGD subjects (CBI + group) participated in a craving behavioral intervention (CBI) group therapy, whereas the remaining 17 IGD subjects (CBI − group) did not receive any intervention, and all IGD subjects were scanned during similar time intervals. The CBI + group showed decreased IGD severity and cue-induced craving, enhanced activation in the anterior insula and decreased insular connectivity with the lingual gyrus and precuneus after receiving CBI. These findings suggest that CBI is effective in reducing craving and severity in IGD, and it may exert its effects by altering insula activation and its connectivity with regions involved in visual processing and attention bias.

Visual selective attention biases contribute to the other-race effect among 9-month-old infants.

During the first year of life, infants maintain their ability to discriminate faces from their own race but become less able to differentiate other-race faces. Though this is likely due to daily experience with own-race faces, the mechanisms linking repeated exposure to optimal face processing remain unclear. One possibility is that frequent experience with own-race faces generates a selective attention bias to these faces. Selective attention elicits enhancement of attended information and suppression of distraction to improve visual processing of attended objects. Thus attention biases to own-race faces may boost processing and discrimination of these faces relative to other-race faces. We used a spatial cueing task to bias attention to own- or other-race faces among Caucasian 9-month-old infants. Infants discriminated faces in the focus of the attention bias, regardless of race, indicating that infants remained sensitive to differences among other-race faces. Instead, efficacy of face discrimination reflected the extent of attention engagement.

Cerebral Asymmetry of fMRI-BOLD Responses to Visual Stimulation

Hemispheric asymmetry of a wide range of functions is a hallmark of the human brain. The visual system has traditionally been thought of as symmetrically distributed in the brain, but a growing body of evidence has challenged this view. Some highly specific visual tasks have been shown to depend on hemispheric specialization. However, the possible lateralization of cerebral responses to a simple checkerboard visual stimulation has not been a focus of previous studies. To investigate this, we performed two sessions of blood-oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 54 healthy subjects during stimulation with a black and white checkerboard visual stimulus. While carefully excluding possible non-physiological causes of left-to-right bias, we compared the activation of the left and the right cerebral hemispheres and related this to grey matter volume, handedness, age, gender, ocular dominance, interocular difference in visual acuity, as well as line-bisection performance. We found a general lateralization of cerebral activation towards the right hemisphere of early visual cortical areas and areas of higher-level visual processing, involved in visuospatial attention, especially in top-down (i.e., goal-oriented) attentional processing. This right hemisphere lateralization was partly, but not completely, explained by an increased grey matter volume in the right hemisphere of the early visual areas. Difference in activation of the superior parietal lobule was correlated with subject age, suggesting a shift towards the left hemisphere with increasing age. Our findings suggest a right-hemispheric dominance of these areas, which could lend support to the generally observed leftward visual attentional bias and to the left hemifield advantage for some visual perception tasks.

Attentional biases towards familiar and unfamiliar foods in children. The role of food neophobia

Familiarity of food stimuli is one factor that has been proposed to explain food preferences and food neophobia in children, with some research suggesting that food neophobia (and familiarity) is at first a predominant of the visual domain. Considering visual attentional biases are a key factor implicated in a majority of fear-related phobias/anxieties, the purpose of this research was to investigate attentional biases to familiar and unfamiliar fruit and vegetables in 8 to 11 year old children with differing levels of food neophobia. To this end, 70 primary aged children completed a visual-probe task measuring attentional biases towards familiar and unfamiliar fruit/vegetables, as well as the food neophobia, general neophobia and willingness to try self-report measures. Results revealed that as an undifferentiated population all children appeared to demonstrate an attentional bias towards the unfamiliar fruit and vegetable stimuli. However, when considering food neophobia, this bias was significantly exaggerated for children self-reporting high food neophobia and negligible for children self-reporting low food neophobia. In addition, willingness to try the food stimuli was inversely correlated with attentional bias towards the unfamiliar fruits/vegetables. Our results demonstrate that visual aspects of food stimuli (e.g. familiarity) play an important role in childhood food neophobia. This study provides the first empirical test of recent theory/models of food neophobia (e.g. Brown & Harris, 2012). Findings are discussed in light of these models and related anxiety models, along with implications concerning the treatment of childhood food neophobia.

Affective and motivational control of vision.

It is increasingly recognized that affective values associated with visual stimuli can influence visual perception, attention, and eye movements. Recent research has begun to uncover the brain mechanisms mediating these phenomena. The present review summarizes the main paradigms and findings demonstrating emotional and motivational influences on visual processing. Several pathways have been identified for enhancing neural responses of cortical visual areas to stimuli with intrinsic emotional value (e.g., facial expressions, social scenes, and others), including projections from the amygdala and ascending modulatory neurotransmitter systems from the brainstem. These pathways can guide attention and gaze to emotionally salient information with either negative (threatening) or positive (rewarding) associations. In addition, abundant research in recent years suggests that probabilistic reward learning can lead to powerful biases in visual attention and saccade control through subcortical pathways connecting visual areas with basal ganglia and superior colliculus. Time-resolved neuroimaging using electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography has begun to tackle the time course of these effects, and can now be complemented by neuroimaging and neurophysiology recordings in monkey. These findings have implications for understanding and assessing affective biases in perception and attention in patients with psychiatric disorders, such as phobias, depression, and addiction, but also open new avenues for rehabilitation in neurological patients with attention disorders.

The effects of early foster care intervention on attention biases in previously institutionalized children in Romania.

Children raised in institutions experience psychosocial deprivation that can negatively impact attention skills and emotion regulation, which subsequently may influence behavioral regulation and social relationships. The current study examined visual attention biases in 8-year-old children who were part of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). Relations among attention biases and concurrent social outcomes were also investigated. In early childhood, 136 children abandoned at birth or shortly thereafter into institutional care were randomized to receive a high-quality foster care intervention or care-as-usual within the context of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). At 8 years of age, 50 care-as-usual, 55 foster care, and 52 community controls performed a behavioral dot-probe task, and indices of attention biases to threat and positive stimuli were calculated. Concurrent data on social behavior were collected. Children placed into the foster care intervention had a significant attention bias toward positive stimuli, while children who received care-as-usual had a significant bias toward threat. Children in the foster care intervention had a significantly larger positive bias when compared to the care-as-usual group. A positive bias was related to more social engagement, more prosocial behavior, less externalizing disorders, and less emotionally withdrawn behavior. The magnitude of positive bias was predicted by age of placement into foster care among children with a history of institutionalization. An attention bias towards positive stimuli was associated with reduced risk for behavioral problems amongst children who experienced early psychosocial deprivation. Research assessing attention biases in children experiencing early environmental stress may refine our understanding of the mechanisms underlying risk for later psychiatric and social disorders and inform prevention efforts.

More than meets the eye: visual attention biases in individuals reporting chronic pain.

The present study used eye-tracking technology to assess whether individuals who report chronic pain direct more attention to sensory pain-related words than do pain-free individuals. A total of 113 participants (51 with chronic pain, 62 pain-free) were recruited. Participants completed a dot-probe task, viewing neutral and sensory pain-related words while their reaction time and eye movements were recorded. Eye-tracking data were analyzed by mixed-design analysis of variance with group (chronic pain versus pain-free) as the between-subjects factor, and word type (sensory pain versus neutral) as the within-subjects factor. Results showed a significant main effect for word type: all participants attended to pain-related words more than neutral words on several eye-tracking parameters. The group main effect was significant for number of fixations, which was greater in the chronic pain group. Finally, the group by word type interaction effect was significant for average visit duration, number of fixations, and total late-phase duration, all greater for sensory pain versus neutral words in the chronic pain group. As well, participants with chronic pain fixated significantly more frequently on pain words than did pain-free participants. In contrast, none of the effects for reaction time were significant. The results support the hypothesis that individuals with chronic pain display specific attentional biases toward pain-related stimuli and demonstrate the value of eye-tracking technology in measuring differences in visual attention variables.

Brain signatures of reward-dependent bias in visual attention

According to the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA), important visual features (features with a high valence) are processed more rapidly than unimportant ones. In the present study, we tested this assumption and assessed brain correlates of reward-dependent changes in visual processing by combining the formal framework of TVA with electrophysiology (EEG). We recorded EEG while participants completed a task in which accuracy of discriminating certain stimulus features was selectively associated with contingent monetary rewards. More specifically, the rewards for detecting Landolt ring gap locations on the diagonal and straight axes were varied across blocks, thereby abstracting valence from salience effects. We quantified performance using TVA-based fitting, and analyzed event-related potentials (ERP) and linear discriminant components to unveil brain mechanisms underlying behavioral changes related to reward. We found a higher processing rate for features associated with high reward relative to those associated with low reward. The behavioral effect was mirrored in multiple grand-average ERP modulations: The P1 was higher, and mid-latency central positivity was lower, when the to-be-discriminated feature's valence was high. A stronger medial frontal negativity (MFN) later in time was found for lower-rewarded features. The results suggest that sensory, attentional, and motivational processes contribute to the effects of reward on visual discrimination accuracy. On the single-trial level, we separated spatio-temporal components giving information about the dynamics of these processes. In accordance with TVA, we argue that a controlled setting of perceptual biases, such that important features are associated with stronger perceptual biases (β values), eases the encoding of features associated with high positive outcomes from early perceptual stages on. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014

Brain signatures of reward-dependent bias in visual attention

Brain signatures of reward-dependent bias in visual attention

Eyes on the bodies: An eye tracking study on deployment of visual attention among females with body dissatisfaction

Visual attentional bias has important functions during the appearance social comparisons. However, for the limitations of experimental paradigms or analysis methods in previous studies, the time course of attentional bias to thin and fat body images among women with body dissatisfaction (BD) has still been unclear. In using free reviewing task combined with eye movement tracking, and based on event-related analyses of the critical first eye movement events, as well as epoch-related analyses of gaze durations, the current study investigated different attentional bias components to body shape/part images during 15s presentation time among 34 high BD and 34 non-BD young women. In comparison to the controls, women with BD showed sustained maintenance biases on thin and fat body images during both early automatic and late strategic processing stages. This study highlights a clear need for research on the dynamics of attentional biases related to body image and eating disturbances.

Body region dissatisfaction predicts attention to body regions on other women

The proliferation of “idealized” (i.e., very thin and attractive) women in the media has contributed to increasing rates of body dissatisfaction among women. However, it remains relatively unknown how women attend to these images: does dissatisfaction predict greater or lesser attention to these body regions on others? Fifty healthy women (mean age=21.8 years) viewed images of idealized and plus-size models; an eye-tracker recorded visual attention. Participants also completed measures of satisfaction for specific body regions, which were then used as predictors of visual attention to these regions on models. Consistent with an avoidance-type process, lower levels of satisfaction with the two regions of greatest reported concern (mid, lower torso) predicted less attention to these regions; greater satisfaction predicted more attention to these regions. While this visual attention bias may aid in preserving self-esteem when viewing idealized others, it may preclude the opportunity for comparisons that could improve self-esteem.

Visual hot spots: An eye tracking study of attention bias in body dysmorphic disorder

Attentional biases have been implicated in the development and maintenance of BDD. In particular, a visual attention bias toward one's unattractive features and others' attractive features (negative bias), might underlie BDD symptoms. Healthy individuals typically pay more attention to others' unattractive and their own attractive features (positive bias). This study used eye tracking to examine visual attention in individuals with BDD relative to healthy controls (HC). We also explored the role of avoidance in attention bias. Participants with BDD and primary face/head concerns (n = 19) and HC (n = 20) completed computerized tasks and questionnaires. Eye movement data (i.e., fixations, dwell time) were recorded while participants viewed images of their own and a control face (selected for average attractiveness and neutral expression). Participants rated distress and perceived most and least attractive features of their own and another face. BDD participants demonstrated a negative mean total bias score compared to HC (fixation: p = 0.24; dwell: p = 0.08). Age (fixation: p = 0.006; dwell: p = 0.03) and gender (fixation: p = 0.03; dwell: p = 0.03) moderated the relationship. Avoidance was associated with a positive bias in BDD. Results suggest individuals with BDD overfocus on negative attributes, a potential factor in the disorder's etiology and maintenance. Conversely, HC had a more balanced focus on their traits. Elucidating the role of attention bias could help to identify risk and maintenance factors in BDD.

Threat is in the Sex of the Beholder: Men Find Weapons Faster than do Women

In visual displays, people locate potentially threatening stimuli, such as snakes, spiders, and weapons, more quickly than similar benign stimuli, such as beetles and gadgets. Such biases are likely adaptive, facilitating fast responses to potential threats. Currently, and historically, men have engaged in more weapons-related activities (fighting and hunting) than women. If biases of visual attention for weapons result from selection pressures related to these activities, then we would predict such biases to be stronger in men than in women. The current study reports the results of two visual search experiments, in which men showed a stronger bias of attention toward guns and knives than did women, whether the weapons were depicted wielded or not. When the weapons were depicted wielded, both sexes searched for them with more caution than when they were not. Neither of these effects extended reliably to syringes, a non-weapon-yet potentially threatening-object. The findings are discussed with respect to the "weapons effect" and social coercion theory.

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the frontal-parietal-temporal area attenuates smoking behavior

Many brain regions are involved in smoking addiction (e.g. insula, ventral tegmental area, prefrontal cortex and hippocampus), and the manipulation of the activity of these brain regions can show a modification of smoking behavior. Low current transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive way to manipulate cortical excitability, and thus brain function and associated behaviors. In this study, we examined the effects of inhibiting the frontal-parietal-temporal association area (FPT) on attention bias to smoking-related cues and smoking behavior in tobacco users. This inhibition is induced by cathodal tDCS stimulation. We tested three stimulation conditions: 1) bilateral cathodal over both sides of FPT; 2) cathodal over right FPT; and 3) sham-tDCS. Visual attention bias to smoking-related cues was evaluated using an eye tracking system. The measurement for smoking behavior was the number of daily cigarettes consumed before and after tDCS treatment. We found that, after bilateral cathodal stimulation of the FPT area, while the attention to smoking-related cues showed a decreased trend, the effects were not significantly different from sham stimulation. The daily cigarette consumption was reduced to a significant level. These effects were not seen under single cathodal tDCS or sham-tDCS. Our results show that low current tDCS of FPT area attenuates smoking cue-related attention and smoking behavior. This non-invasive brain stimulation technique, targeted at FPT areas, might be a promising method for treating smoking behavior.

Optogenetic and Electrical Microstimulation Systematically Bias Visuospatial Choice in Primates

Optogenetics is a recently developed method in which neurons are genetically modified to express membrane proteins sensitive to light, enabling precisely targeted control of neural activity [1-3]. The temporal and spatial precision afforded by neural stimulation by light holds promise as a powerful alternative to current methods of neural control, which rely predominantly on electrical and pharmacological methods, in both research and clinical settings [4, 5]. Although the optogenetic approach has been widely used in rodent and other small animal models to study neural circuitry [6-8], its functional application in primate models has proven more difficult. In contrast to the relatively large literature on the effects of cortical electrical microstimulation in perceptual and decision-making tasks [9-13], previous studies of optogenetic stimulation in primates have not demonstrated its utility in similar paradigms [14-18]. In this study, we directly compare the effects of optogenetic activation and electrical microstimulation in the lateral intraparietal area during a visuospatial discrimination task. We observed significant and predictable biases in visual attention in response to both forms of stimulation that are consistent with the experimental modulation of a visual salience map. Our results demonstrate the power of optogenetics as a viable alternative to electrical microstimulation for the precise dissection of the cortical pathways of high-level processes in the primate brain.