Dataset Information

Capture of attention to threatening stimuli without perceptual awareness.

ABSTRACT: Visual images that convey threatening information can automatically capture attention. One example is an object looming in the direction of the observer-presumably because such a stimulus signals an impending collision. A critical question for understanding the relationship between attention and conscious awareness is whether awareness is required for this type of prioritized attentional selection. Although it has been suggested that visual spatial attention can only be affected by consciously perceived events, we show that automatic allocation of attention can occur even without conscious awareness of impending threat. We used a visual search task to show that a looming stimulus on a collision path with an observer captures attention but a looming stimulus on a near-miss path does not. Critically, observers were unaware of any difference between collision and near-miss stimuli even when explicitly asked to discriminate between them in separate experiments. These results counter traditional salience-based models of attentional capture, demonstrating that in the absence of perceptual awareness, the visual system can extract behaviorally relevant details from a visual scene and automatically categorize threatening versus nonthreatening images at a level of precision beyond our conscious perceptual capabilities.

SUBMITTER: Lin JY

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2724068 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Capture of attention to threatening stimuli without perceptual awareness.

Lin Jeffrey Y JY Murray Scott O SO Boynton Geoffrey M GM

Current biology : CB 20090611 13

Visual images that convey threatening information can automatically capture attention. One example is an object looming in the direction of the observer-presumably because such a stimulus signals an impending collision. A critical question for understanding the relationship between attention and conscious awareness is whether awareness is required for this type of prioritized attentional selection. Although it has been suggested that visual spatial attention can only be affected by consciously p ...[more]

PMID: 19523828

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Project description:Over the past two decades, evidence has accumulated that the human amygdala exerts some of its functions also when the observer is not aware of the content, or even presence, of the triggering emotional stimulus. Nevertheless, there is as of yet no consensus on the limits and conditions that affect the extent of amygdala's response without focused attention or awareness. Here we review past and recent studies on this subject, examining neuroimaging literature on healthy participants as well as brain-damaged patients, and we comment on their strengths and limits. We propose a theoretical distinction between processes involved in attentional unawareness, wherein the stimulus is potentially accessible to enter visual awareness but fails to do so because attention is diverted, and in sensory unawareness, wherein the stimulus fails to enter awareness because its normal processing in the visual cortex is suppressed. We argue this distinction, along with data sampling amygdala responses with high temporal resolution, helps to appreciate the multiplicity of functional and anatomical mechanisms centered on the amygdala and supporting its role in non-conscious emotion processing. Separate, but interacting, networks relay visual information to the amygdala exploiting different computational properties of subcortical and cortical routes, thereby supporting amygdala functions at different stages of emotion processing. This view reconciles some apparent contradictions in the literature, as well as seemingly contrasting proposals, such as the dual stage and the dual route model. We conclude that evidence in favor of the amygdala response without awareness is solid, albeit this response originates from different functional mechanisms and is driven by more complex neural networks than commonly assumed. Acknowledging the complexity of such mechanisms can foster new insights on the varieties of amygdala functions without awareness and their impact on human behavior.

Dataset Information

Capture of attention to threatening stimuli without perceptual awareness.

Publications

Capture of attention to threatening stimuli without perceptual awareness.

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