title: Emotional attention for erotic stimuli: Cognitive and brain mechanisms.
abstract: It has long been posited that among emotional stimuli, only negative threatening information modulates early shifts of attention. However, in the last few decades there has been an increase in research showing that attention is also involuntarily oriented toward positive rewarding stimuli such as babies, food, and erotic information. Because reproduction-related stimuli have some of the largest effects among positive stimuli on emotional attention, the present work reviews recent literature and proposes that the cognitive and cerebral mechanisms underlying the involuntarily attentional orientation toward threat-related information are also sensitive to erotic information. More specifically, the recent research suggests that both types of information involuntarily orient attention due to their concern relevance and that the amygdala plays an important role in detecting concern-relevant stimuli, thereby enhancing perceptual processing and influencing emotional attentional processes.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1202, Switzerland.|Laboratory for the Study of Emotion Elicitation and Expression, Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Sennwald
authors.affiliation: Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1202, Switzerland.|Laboratory for the Study of Emotion Elicitation and Expression, Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pool
authors.affiliation: Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1202, Switzerland.|Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Laboratory, Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Brosch
authors.affiliation: Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1202, Switzerland.|Laboratory for the Study of Emotion Elicitation and Expression, Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Sylvain
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Delplanque
authors.affiliation: Sexual Medicine Unit, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bianchi-Demicheli
authors.affiliation: Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1202, Switzerland.|Laboratory for the Study of Emotion Elicitation and Expression, Department of Psychology, FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sander
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004882:Erotica; D006801:Humans
keywords: amygdala; erotic information; motivational relevance; reward; selective attention