title: Emotional arousal amplifies the effects of biased competition in the brain.
abstract: The arousal-biased competition model predicts that arousal increases the gain on neural competition between stimuli representations. Thus, the model predicts that arousal simultaneously enhances processing of salient stimuli and impairs processing of relatively less-salient stimuli. We tested this model with a simple dot-probe task. On each trial, participants were simultaneously exposed to one face image as a salient cue stimulus and one place image as a non-salient stimulus. A border around the face cue location further increased its bottom-up saliency. Before these visual stimuli were shown, one of two tones played: one that predicted a shock (increasing arousal) or one that did not. An arousal-by-saliency interaction in category-specific brain regions (fusiform face area for salient faces and parahippocampal place area for non-salient places) indicated that brain activation associated with processing the salient stimulus was enhanced under arousal whereas activation associated with processing the non-salient stimulus was suppressed under arousal. This is the first functional magnetic resonance imaging study to demonstrate that arousal can enhance information processing for prioritized stimuli while simultaneously impairing processing of non-prioritized stimuli. Thus, it goes beyond previous research to show that arousal does not uniformly enhance perceptual processing, but instead does so selectively in ways that optimizes attention to highly salient stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA.
authors.forename: Tae-Ho
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA.
authors.forename: Michiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sakaki
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA.
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA.
authors.forename: Ricardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Velasco
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA, and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA mara.mather@usc.edu.
authors.forename: Mara
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mather
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D015982:Bias; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D003163:Competitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D016014:Linear Models; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen
keywords: FFA and PPA; arousal-biased competition; emotion-induced enhancement and impairment; emotional arousal; fear-conditioning; perception and attention