Dataset Information

Effects of Scene Properties and Emotional Valence on Brain Activations: A Fixation-Related fMRI Study.

ABSTRACT: Temporal and spatial characteristics of fixations are affected by image properties, including high-level scene characteristics, such as object-background composition, and low-level physical characteristics, such as image clarity. The influence of these factors is modulated by the emotional content of an image. Here, we aimed to establish whether brain correlates of fixations reflect these modulatory effects. To this end, we simultaneously scanned participants and measured their eye movements, while presenting negative and neutral images in various image clarity conditions, with controlled object-background composition. The fMRI data were analyzed using a novel fixation-based event-related (FIBER) method, which allows the tracking of brain activity linked to individual fixations. The results revealed that fixating an emotional object was linked to greater deactivation in the right lingual gyrus than fixating the background of an emotional image, while no difference between object and background was found for neutral images. We suggest that deactivation in the lingual gyrus might be linked to inhibition of saccade execution. This was supported by fixation duration results, which showed that in the negative condition, fixations falling on the object were longer than those falling on the background. Furthermore, increase in the image clarity was correlated with fixation-related activity within the lateral occipital complex, the structure linked to object recognition. This correlation was significantly stronger for negative images, presumably due to greater deployment of attention towards emotional objects. Our eye-tracking results are in line with these observations, showing that the chance of fixating an object rose faster for negative images over neutral ones as the level of noise decreased. Overall, our study demonstrated that emotional value of an image changes the way that low and high-level scene properties affect the characteristics of fixations. The fixation-related brain activity is affected by the low-level scene properties and this impact differs between negative and neutral images. The high-level scene properties also affect brain correlates of fixations, but only in the case of the negative images.

SUBMITTER: Kuniecki M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5583150 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of Scene Properties and Emotional Valence on Brain Activations: A Fixation-Related fMRI Study.

Kuniecki Michał M Wołoszyn Kinga B KB Domagalik Aleksandra A Pilarczyk Joanna J

Frontiers in human neuroscience 20170831

Temporal and spatial characteristics of fixations are affected by image properties, including high-level scene characteristics, such as object-background composition, and low-level physical characteristics, such as image clarity. The influence of these factors is modulated by the emotional content of an image. Here, we aimed to establish whether brain correlates of fixations reflect these modulatory effects. To this end, we simultaneously scanned participants and measured their eye movements, wh ...[more]

PMID: 28912699

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Project description:The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with "up" responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required.

Dataset Information

Effects of Scene Properties and Emotional Valence on Brain Activations: A Fixation-Related fMRI Study.

Publications

Effects of Scene Properties and Emotional Valence on Brain Activations: A Fixation-Related fMRI Study.

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