Differential effects of fearful faces under spatial attended and unattended conditions: evidence from an event-related potential study.
We examined the influence of spatial selective attention on the processing of emotional faces (happy neutral, and fear) using behavioral as well as event-related potential recordings. Emotional stimuli were rapidly presented randomly to the right or the left visual field while participants attended to one visual field at a time, detecting smaller stimuli that were shown in the attended field. Behavioral results showed decreased accuracy for the fearful faces compared with neutral and happy faces. Event-related potential data showed that compared with the neutral and happy faces, fearful faces appearing in the right visual field elicited enhanced contralateral P1 amplitudes in the unattended condition, whereas fearful faces appearing in the left visual field elicited decreased contralateral N170 activity in the attended condition. These findings provide evidence for differential emotional processing under spatial attended and unattended conditions.
aKey Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in Medicine bSchool of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Chuhan
C
Li
Min
M
Wang
Ping
P
Yang
Xianxian
X
Kong
Ling
L
Li
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult