Attentional capture by emotional stimuli is preserved in patients with amygdala lesions

NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

卷:49

Article

Piech, Richard M.¹  McHugo, Maureen¹  Smith, Stephen D.²  Dukic, Mildred S.¹  Van Der Meer, Joost¹  Abou-Khalil, Bassel³  Most, Steven B.⁴  Zald, David H.¹ 

[1] Vanderbilt Univ, Dept Psychol, Nashville, TN 37240 USA

[2] Univ Winnipeg, Dept Psychol, Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9, Canada

[3] Vanderbilt Univ, Dept Neurol, Nashville, TN USA

[4] Univ Delaware, Dept Psychol, Newark, DE USA

关键词: Amygdala;    Attention;    Emotion;    Lesion study;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.08.004

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The importance of cues signaling reward, threat or danger would suggest that they receive processing privileges in the neural systems underlying perception and attention. Previous research has documented enhanced processing of motivationally salient cues, and has pointed to the amygdala as a candidate neural structure underlying the enhancements. In the current study, we examined whether the amygdala was necessary for this emotional modulation of attention to occur. Patients with unilateral amygdala lesions and matched controls completed an emotional attentional blink task in which emotional distractors impair the perception of subsequent targets. Emotional images proved more distracting across all participant groups, including those with right or left amygdala lesions. These data argue against a central role for the amygdala in mediating all types of attentional capture by emotional stimuli. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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