Abstract
Recent findings from event-related potentials (ERPs) studies provided strong evidence that cen- trally presented emotional pictures could be used to assess affective processing. Moreover, several studies showed that emotionally charged stimuli may automatically attract attention even if these are not consciously identified. Indeed, such perceptive conditions can be compared to those typical of the peripheral vision, particularly known to have low spatial resolution capacities. The aim of the present study was to characterize at behavioral and neural levels the impact of emotional visual scenes presented in peripheral vision. Eighteen participants were asked to categorize neutral and unpleasant pictures presented at central (0°) and peripheral eccentricities (−30 and +30°) while ERPs were recorded from 63 electrodes. ERPs were analysed by means of spatio-temporal principal component analyses (PCA) in order to evaluate influences of the emotional content on ERP components for each spatial position (central vs. peripheral). Main results highlight that affective modulation of early ERP components exists for both centrally and peripherally presented pictures. These findings suggest that, for far peripheral eccentricities as for central vision, the brain engages specific resources to process emotional information.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Rousselet GA, Thorpe SJ, Fabre-Thorpe M. How parallel is visual processing in the ventral pathway? Trends Cogn Sci 2004;8:363–70.
Liversedge SP, Findlay JM. Saccadic eye movements and cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 2000;4:6–14.
Dacey DM, Petersen MR. Dendritic field size and morphology of midget and parasol ganglion cells of the human retina. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1992;89:9666–70.
Livingstone MS, Hubel DH. Psychophysical evidence for separate channels for the perception of form, color, movement, and depth. J Neurosci 1987;7:3416–68.
Schiller PH, Logothetis NK, Charles ER. Functions of the colour-opponent and broad-band channels of the visual system. Nature 1990;343:68–70.
Chung STL, Mansfield JS, Legge GE. Psychophysics of reading. XVIII. The effect of print size on reading speed in normal peripheral vision. Vision Res 1998;38:2949–62.
Nasanen R, O’Leary C. Recognition of band-pass filtered handwritten numerals in foveal and peripheral vision. Vision Res 1998;38:3691–701.
Anderson RS. Aliasing in peripheral vision for counterphase gratings. J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis 1996;13:2288–93.
Jüttner M, Rentschler I. Scale-invariant superiority of foveal vision in perceptual categorization. Eur J Neurosci 2000;12:353–9.
Loftus GR, Mackworth NH. Cognitive determinants of fixation location during picture viewing. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 1978;4:565–72.
Nelson WW, Loftus GR. The functional visual field during picture viewing. J Exp Psychol Human Percept Perform 1980;6: 391–9.
Naïli F, Despretz P, Boucart M. Colour recognition at large visual eccentricities in normal observers and patients with low vision. Neuroreport 2006;17:1571–4.
Thorpe SJ, Gegenfurtner K, Fabre-Thorpe M, Bülthoff HH. Detection of animals in natural images using far peripheral vision. Eur J Neurosci 2001;14:869–76.
Lang PJ, Bradley MM, Cuthbert BN. Motivated attention: affect, activation, action. In: Lang PJ, Simons RF, Balaban MT, editors. Attention and orienting: sensory and motivational processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erblaum; 1997. pp. 97–135.
Smith NK, Cacioppo JT, Larsen JT, Chartrand TL. May I have your attention, please: electrocortical responses to positive and negative stimuli. Neuropsychologia 2003;41:171–83.
Buchanan TW. Retrieval of emotional memories. Psychol Bull 2007;133:761–79.
Labar KS, Cabeza R. Cognitive neuroscience of emotional memory. Nat Rev Neurosci 2006;7:54–64.
Phelps EA. Human emotion and memory: interactions of the amygdala and hippocampal complex. Curr Opin Neurobiol 2004;14:198–202.
Schupp HT, Junghöfer M, Weike AI, Hamm AO. Emotional facilitation of sensory processing in the visual cortex. Psychol Sci 2003;14(1):7–13.
Delplanque S, Silvert L, Hot P, Rigoulot S, Sequeira H. Arousal and valence effects on event-related P3a and P3b during emotional categorization. Int J Psychophysiol 2006;60:315–22.
Carretié L, Hinojosa JA, Mercado F, Tapia M. Cortical response to subjectively unconscious danger. Neuroimage 2005;24:615–23.
Junghöfer M, Bradley MM, Elbert TR, Lang PJ. Fleeting images: a new look at early emotion discrimination. Psychophysiology 2001;38:175–8.
Silvert L, Delplanque S, Bouwalerh H, Verpoort C, Sequeira H. Autonomic responding to aversive words without conscious valence discrimination. Int J Psychophysiol 2004;53:135–45.
Williams MA, Morris AP, McGlone F, Abbott DF, Mattingley JB. Amygdala responses to fearful and happy facial expressions under conditions of binocular suppression. J Neurosci 2004;24:2898–904.
Calvo MG, Lang PJ. Parafoveal semantic processing of emotional visual scenes. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2005;31:502–19.
Lang PJ, Bradley MM, Cuthbert BN (2001) International affective picture system (IAPS): instruction manual and affective ratings. Technical report A-5, The center for research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.
Delplanque S, N’Diaye K, Scherer K, Grandjean D. Spatial frequencies or emotional effects? A systematic measure of spatial frequencies for IAPS pictures by a discrete wavelet analysis. J Neurosci Methods 2007;165:144–50.
Pourtois G, Delplanque S, Michel C, Vuilleumier P. Beyond conventional event-related brain potential (ERP): exploring the time-course of visual emotion processing using topographic and principal component analyses (this issue).
Carretié L, Iglesias J, Barry RJ. Parietal N300 elicited by emotional visual stimulation. J Psychophysiol 1998;12:376–83.
Delplanque S, Lavoie ME, Hot P, Silvert L, Sequeira H. Modulation of cognitive processing by emotional valence studied through event-related potentials in humans. Neurosci Lett 2004;356:1–4.
Hot P, Saito Y, Mandai O, Kobayashi T, Sequeira H. An ERP investigation of emotional processing in European and Japanese individuals. Brain Res 2006;1122:171–8.
Kayser J, Tenke CE. Optimizing PCA methodology for ERP component identification and measurement: theoretical rationale and empirical evaluation. Clin Neurophysiol 2003;114:2307–25.
Hécaen H. Les gauchers: Etude Neurophysiologique. Paris: PUF; 1984.
Ochsner KN. Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past. J Exp Psychol Gen 2000;129:242–61.
Kenemans JL, Baas JMP, Mangun GR, Lijffijt M, Verbaten MN. On the processing of spatial frequencies as revealed by evoked-potential source modeling. Clin Neurophysiol 2000;111:1113–23.
Baas JMP, Kenemans JL, Mangun GR. Selective attention to spatial frequency: an ERP and source localization analysis. Clin Neurophysiol 2002;113:1840–54.
Winston JS, Vuilleumier P, Dolan RJ. Effects of low-spatial frequency components of fearful faces on fusiform cortex activity. Curr Biol 2003;13:1824–9.
Rayner K. Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychol Bull 1998;124:372–422.
Spencer KM, Dien J, Donchin E. Spatiotemporal analysis of the late ERP responses to deviant stimuli. Psychophysiology 2001;38:343–58.
Fox E, Russo R, Bowles R, Dutton K. Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in subclinical anxiety? J Exp Psychol Gen 2001;130:681–700.
Koster EHW, Crombez G, Van Damme S, Verschuere B, De Houwer J. Does imminent threat capture and hold attention? Emotion 2004;4:312–7.
Mathews A, Yiend J, Lawrence AD. Individual differences in the modulation of fear-related brain activation by attentional control. J Cogn Neurosci 2004;16:1683–94.
Hopf JM, Mangun GR. Shifting visual attention in space: an electrophysiological analysis using high spatial resolution mapping. Clin Neurophysiol 2000;111:1241–57.
Clark VP, Hillyard SA. Spatial selective attention affects early extrastriate but not striate components of the visual evoked potential. J Cogn Neurosci 1996;8:387–402.
Pourtois G, Grandjean D, Sander D, Vuilleumier P. Electrophysiological correlates of rapid spatial orienting towards fearful faces. Cereb Cortex 2004;14:619–33.
Whittingstall K, Stroink G, Schmidt M. Evaluating the spatial relationship of event-related potential and functional MRI sources in the primary visual cortex. Hum Brain Mapp 2007;28:134–42.
Liu L, Ioannides AA. Spatiotemporal dynamics and connectivity pattern differences between centrally and peripherally presented faces. Neuroimage 2006;15:1726–40.
Fize D, Fabre-Thorpe M, Richard G, Doyon B, Thorpe SJ. Rapid categorization of foveal and extrafoveal natural images: associated ERPs and effects of lateralization. Brain Cogn 2005;59:145–58.
Foster KH, Gaska JP, Nagler M, Pollen DA. Spatial and temporal frequency selectivity of neurones in visual cortical areas v1 and v2 of the macaque monkey. J Physiol 1985;365:331–63.
Movshon JA, Thompson ID, Tolhurst DJ. Spatial and temporal contrast sensitivity of neurones in areas 17 and 18 of the cat’s visual cortex. J Physiol 1978;283:101–20.
Clark VP, Fan S, Hillyard SA. Identification of early visual evoked potential generators by retinotopic and topographical analyses. Human Brain Mapping 1995;2:170–87.
Carretié L, Hinojosa JA, Martin-Loeches M, Mercado F, Tapia M. Automatic attention to emotional stimuli: neural correlates. Hum Brain Mapp 2004;22:290–9.
Amaral DG, Behniea H, Kelly JL. Topographic organization of projections from the amygdala to the visual cortex in the macaque monkey. Neuroscience 2003;118:1099–120.
Morris JS, Öhman A, Dolan RJ. Conscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala. Nature 1998; 393:467–70.
Davidson RJ, Irwin W. The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style. Trends Cogn Sci 1999;3:11–21.
Begleiter H, Gross MM, Kissin B. Evoked cortical responses to affective visual stimuli. Psychophysiology 1967;3:336–44.
Kayser J, Tenke CE, Nordby H, Hammerborg D, Hugdah K, Erdmann G. Event-related potential (ERP) asymmetries to emotional stimuli in a visual half-field paradigm. Psychophysiology 1997;34:414–26.
Sincich LC, Horton JC. The circuitry of V1 and V2: integration of color, form and motion. Annu Rev Neurosci 2005;28:303–26.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a grant of the Ministère de la Recherche of France to S.R. and funds from CNRS and Université de Lille I to H.S. Authors are grateful to Dr J. Polich for helpful comments on the electrophysiological data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rigoulot, S., Delplanque, S., Despretz, P. et al. Peripherally Presented Emotional Scenes: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Early ERP Responses. Brain Topogr 20, 216–223 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-008-0050-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-008-0050-9