Attention and Emotion doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5016/1806-8774.2008.v10p84

Authors

  • Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal Vision Research Institute

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5016/1806-8774.2008.v10p84

Keywords:

Attention, Face recognition, Fusiform gyrus, Emotion, Emotional salience, Amygdala, Reward, Nucleus accumbens, Sublenticular extended amygdala of the basal forebrain, Hypothalamus, Orbitofrontal cortex, Ventral tegmentum of the midbrain, fMRI.

Abstract

Attention is central to many functions such as vision, emotion, reward, working memory and access awareness. However, it is not clear how attention interacts with emotion and how to separate them. We report that (1) Visual attention is a (reentrant) neural signal that enhances the feed-forward stimulus-related signal by modulating it. (2) Emotion is feeling related affective subjective experience; its neural correlate is amygdala-neural-net. (3) Attentional modulating signal could be in forward (bottom-up) direction from attentional 'source' such as thalamic reticular nucleus or in backward (feedback, top-down) direction from attentional 'source' such as fronto-parietal network. The 'targets' of attention may be fusiform gyrus for face recognition, amygdala for emotion, and 'nucleus accumbens, amygdala, sublenticular extended amygdala of the basal forebrain, hypothalamus, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral tegmentum of the midbrain in humans' for reward system. (4) There are five aspects of attention reflected in five attentional tasks: sustained, covert, divided, selective, and switching attention. The basic attention mechanism may be similar in all attentional tasks. (5) Selective attention plays major role in facial emotion. (6) Attention potentiates the processing of face recognition, sharpens the discriminations of facial emotions, and increases the sensitivity of reward. Emotional salience of the stimuli can regulate attention. (7) It is possible to separate attentional areas from emotion related areas using fMRI. (8) A dual-aspect framework can address the explanatory gap (how emotional subjective experiences can arise in emotion related neural-net). In conclusion, attention modulates emotion and related systems such as face recognition and reward.

Author Biography

Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal, Vision Research Institute

Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal is a Professor (Research) at Vision Research Institute. After completing B.E. (Electrical Engg) in India, he moved to USA to do M.S. (Computer Science) at Iowa State University, Ph.D. (Biophysics) at University of Illinois, and postdoctoral fellowship in color vision psychophysics at University of Chicago. Further researches in visual psychophysics, neuroscience, and fMRI were at York University (Canada), New England College of Optometry (Boston), and Harvard Medical Schools (Schepens Eye Research Institute and McLean Hospital). His research includes sleep and purposive behavior, biophysics of blood-brain barrier, cooperativity model in psychopathology, flicker photometry, appearance of steadily viewed lights, central binocular mechanism affecting chromatic adaptation, foveal cone thresholds, apparent motion, effects of multiple stimuli on ocular orientation by cats, effects of eye position on auditory localization and neural representation of space in superior colliculus of cats, spatiotemporal characteristics of Red-Green channel including orientation and spatial frequency tuned mechanisms and discrimination, fMRI and voxel-based morphometry for MDMA users, fMRI activation in human suprachiasmatic nucleus, visual attention, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, visual awareness, proto-experiences and subjective experiences, self, evolution of consciousness, and phenomenal time. He is the founder of Vision Research Institute (USA) and Dristi Anusandhan Sansthan (India). His has keen interest in mind-brain problem. Further details are given in http://www.geocities.com/rlpvimal/.

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Published

2008-08-25

Issue

Vol. 10 (2008)

Section

Reviews

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