Retinotopy of emotion: Perception of negatively valenced stimuli presented at different spatial locations as revealed by event‐related potentials

Abstract

Scarce previous data on how the location where an emotional stimulus appears in the visual scene modulates its perception suggest that, for functional reasons, a perceptual advantage may exist, vertically, for stimuli presented at the lower visual field (LoVF) and, horizontally, for stimuli presented at the left visual field (LeVF). However, this issue has been explored through a limited number of spatial locations, usually in a single spatial dimension (e.g., horizontal) and invariant eccentricities. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 39 participants perceiving brief neutral (wheels) and emotional stimuli (spiders) presented at 17 different locations, one foveal and 16 at different peripheral coordinates. As a secondary scope, we explored the role of the magnocellular (M) and the parvocellular (P) visual pathways by presenting an isoluminant/heterochromatic (P‐biased) and a heteroluminant/isochromatic version (M‐biased) of each stimulus. Emo > Neu effects were observed in PN1 (120 ms) for stimuli located at fovea, and in PN2 (215 ms) for stimuli located both at fovea and diverse peripheral regions. A factorial approach to these effects further revealed that: (a) emotional stimuli presented in the periphery are efficiently perceived, without evident decrease from para‐ to perifovea; (b) peripheral Emo > Neu effects are reflected 95 ms later than foveal Emo > Neu effects in ERPs; (c) LoVF is more involved than UVF in these effects; (d) our data fail to support the LeVF advantage previously reported, and (e) Emo > Neu effects were significant for both M and P stimuli.

Early ERP functions are indexed by lateralized effects to peripherally presented emotional faces and scrambles

“…We observed no effect of facial expression on the P1, in line with other peripheral studies (Rigoulot et al, 2012;Wijers & Banis, 2012), and recent mapping studies showing foveal but no peripheral modulation of the P1 component (Carretié et al, 2017(Carretié et al, , 2020. Remarkably, we observed a generally increased P1 to scrambles compared to faces, which is in partial contrast to previous work (Allison et al, 1999;Bentin et al, 2007;Thierry et al, 2007; but see Ganis et al, 2012;Rousselet et al, 2008;Schendan & Ganis, 2013).…”

“…Thus, studies should examine peripheral stimulus positions on the horizontal midline since, for these locations, no profound C1 or later negativity is reported (Capilla et al, 2016). Furthermore, such mapping studies do not confirm the absence of a contralateral P1 but rather a polarity reversal of the P1 between contra-and ipsilateral sensors (Capilla et al, 2016) and typically rely on independent or principal component analyses to dissociate between overlapping early ERPs (e.g., see Capilla et al, 2016;Carretié et al, 2020). Finally, the stimuli used by Slagter and colleagues (2016)-arrays of lines-were defined by subtracting line elements from a masking display rather than the addition of a stimulus to an empty display.…”

Influence of dynamic content on visual attention during video advertisements

“…As previously discussed, whenever viewers need to remember information about stable objects, they can just look at them (Hollan et al, 2000;Morton, 1967;Song et al, 2019). This is useful for human survival, as it frees attention to concentrate on fleeting objects and relevant objects located peripherally (Carretié et al, 2020;Lang and Bailey, 2015). These arguments lead to the following interaction hypothesis predictions:…”

Fast unconscious processing of emotional stimuli in early stages of the visual cortex

“…This resulted in 80 trials per emotional category and location, and the total number of trials was 320 (80 × 2 categories × 2 locations). Each probe stimulus, whatever its location, was displayed on the screen for 8.33 ms. We selected this peripheral location since early ERP visual components have previously shown to be more sensitive to emotional stimuli similar to those employed here when they appear in the lower visual field than when presented in other locations of the visual scene (Carretié et al, 2020). Additionally, the lower field is anatomically overrepresented in V1 (Burkhalter et al, 1986), so stimuli in this area tend to elicit greater amplitudes in these components (Capilla et al, 2016).…”