title: Emotion and action: the effect of fear on saccadic performance.
abstract: According to evolutionary accounts, emotions originated to prepare an organism for action (Darwin 1872; Frijda 1986). To investigate this putative relationship between emotion and action, we examined the effect of an emotional stimulus on oculomotor actions controlled by the superior colliculus (SC), which has connections with subcortical structures involved in the perceptual prioritization of emotion, such as the amygdala through the pulvinar. The pulvinar connects the amygdala to cells in the SC responsible for the speed of saccade execution, while not affecting the spatial component of the saccade. We tested the effect of emotion on both temporal and spatial signatures of oculomotor functioning using a gap-distractor paradigm. Changes in spatial programming were examined through saccadic curvature in response to a remote distractor stimulus, while changes in temporal execution were examined using a fixation gap manipulation. We show that following the presentation of a task-irrelevant fearful face, the temporal but not the spatial component of the saccade generation system was affected.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Department of Psychology, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada. greg.west@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Greg L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: West
authors.forename: Naseem
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Al-Aidroos
authors.forename: Josh
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Susskind
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pratt
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D020649:Pulvinar / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D013477:Superior Colliculi / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult