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The Journal of Neuroscience, January 31, 2007, 27(5):1082-1089; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3223-06.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Selective Visual Attention to Emotion

Harald T. Schupp,¹ Jessica Stockburger,¹ Maurizio Codispoti,² Markus Junghöfer,³ Almut I. Weike,⁴ and Alfons O. Hamm⁴

¹Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany, ²Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy, ³Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany, and ⁴Department of Psychology, University of Greifswald, 17487 Greifswald, Germany

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Harald T. Schupp, Institute of Psychology, University of Konstanz, P.O. Box D36, 78457 Konstanz, Germany. Email: Harald.Schupp{at}uni-konstanz.de

Visual attention can be voluntarily directed toward stimuli and is attracted by stimuli that are emotionally significant. The present study explored the case when both processes coincide and attention is directed to emotional stimuli. Participants viewed a rapid and continuous stream of high-arousing erotica and mutilation stimuli as well as low-arousing control images. Each of the three stimulus categories served in separate runs as target or nontarget category. Event-related brain potential measures revealed that the interaction of attention and emotion varied for specific processing stages. The effects of attention and emotional significance operated additively during perceptual encoding indexed by negative-going potentials over posterior regions (200–350 ms after stimulus onset). In contrast, thought to reflect the process of stimulus evaluation, P3 target effects (400–600 ms after stimulus onset) were markedly augmented when erotica and mutilation compared with control stimuli were the focus of attention. Thus, emotion potentiated attention effects specifically during later stages of processing. These findings suggest to specify the interaction of attention and emotion in distinct processing stages.

Key words: attention; emotion; ERP; posterior negative potential; P3; late positive potential

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Received April 4, 2006; revised Nov. 7, 2006; accepted Nov. 28, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Harald T. Schupp, Institute of Psychology, University of Konstanz, P.O. Box D36, 78457 Konstanz, Germany. Email: Harald.Schupp{at}uni-konstanz.de

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