Rapid discrimination of visual scene content in the human brain

Abstract

The rapid evaluation of complex visual environments is critical for an organism's adaptation and survival. Previous studies have shown that emotionally significant visual scenes, both pleasant and unpleasant, elicit a larger late positive wave in the event-related brain potential (ERP) than emotionally neutral pictures. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether neuroelectric responses elicited by complex pictures discriminate between specific, biologically relevant contents of the visual scene and to determine how early in the picture processing this discrimination occurs. Subjects (n=264) viewed 55 color slides differing in both scene content and emotional significance. No categorical judgments or responses were required. Consistent with previous studies, we found that emotionally arousing pictures, regardless of their content, produce a larger late positive wave than neutral pictures. However, when pictures were further categorized by content, anterior ERP components in a time window between 200−600 ms following stimulus onset showed a high selectivity for pictures with erotic content compared to other pictures regardless of their emotional valence (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant) or emotional arousal. The divergence of ERPs elicited by erotic and non-erotic contents started at 185 ms post-stimulus in the fronto-central midline regions, with a later onset in parietal regions. This rapid, selective, and content-specific processing of erotic materials and its dissociation from other pictures (including emotionally positive pictures) suggests the existence of a specialized neural network for prioritized processing of a distinct category of biologically relevant stimuli with high adaptive and evolutionary significance.

Intelligence and Cognitive Control

“…This discrimination was present in the early time window of the P1 component of the ERP -a proximal index of attention allocation -and even more pronounced in the later endogenous component of the P3 -functionally considered response-related (decision-making). The findings are in line with previous research (Radilovà, Figar, & Radil, 1984;Anokhin et al, 2006), suggesting that the human brain is able to discriminate rapidly between specific contents of visual settings. Also in line with previous research (Bernat et al, 2001;Ito, Cacioppo, & Lang, 1998;Smith, Cacioppo, Larsen & Chatrand, 2003) is the finding that negative pictures elicited a more positive amplitude than positive and neutral ones.…”

Attractiveness and affordance shape tools neural coding: Insight from ERPs

“…In this regard the LPP has been mainly related to emotional processing (Cuthbert et al, 2000;Ferrari et al, 2011;Righi et al, 2012) reflecting the level of arousal triggered by the stimulus (Anokhin et al, 2006;Schupp et al, 2004;Hajcak et al, 2006). Overall, our results indicated that between 300 and 750 ms the processing of both affordance and attractiveness exerted an additive reinforcement in the processing of tools simultaneously evaluated as high attractive and high affording.…”

Spatio-temporal Brain Dynamics of Understanding Social Versus Private Intentions: An Electrical Neuroimaging Study

“…First of all, the communicative condition may differ from the private condition in terms of its emotional content, or simply the arousal that it elicits (Krämer et al 2010;Anokhin et al 2006). For example, the stimuli in the communicative condition appear more humorously than those of the private condition.…”