title: Emotion-specific modulation of early visual perception.
abstract: Exposure to fearful facial expressions enhances vision at low spatial-frequencies and impairs vision at high spatial-frequencies. This perceptual trade-off is thought to be a consequence of a fear-related activation of the magnocellular visual pathway to the amygdala. In this study we examined the generality of the effect of emotion on low-level visual perception by assessing participants' orientation sensitivity to low and high spatial-frequency targets following exposure to disgust, fear, and neutral facial expressions. The results revealed that exposure to fear and disgust expressions have opposing effects on early vision: fearful expressions enhanced low spatial-frequency vision and impaired high spatial-frequency vision, while disgust expressions, like neutral expressions, impaired low spatial-frequency vision and enhanced high spatial-frequency vision. Thus we show the effect of exposure to fear on visual perception is not a general emotional effect, but rather one that may that depend on amygdala activation, or one that may be specific to fear.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Nipissing University , North Bay , ON , Canada.
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Nicol
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Perrotta
authors.forename: Sabina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Caliciuri
authors.forename: Mark P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Wachowiak
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*