Subcortical Discrimination of Unperceived Objects during Binocular Rivalry

Pasley, Brian N.; Mayes, Linda C.; Schultz, Robert T.

doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(04)00155-2

Cited by 262 publications

(261 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Other lesion studies have reported amygdala responsivity towards fearful or fear conditioned faces when presented in subjects' blind field (Morris et al, 2001) and during visual extinction (Vuilleumier et al, 2002). Neuroimaging studies have found similar results in amygdala activity using psychophysical techniques that manipulate subjects' awareness, including visual masking (Whalen, 1998;Whalen et al, 2004;Williams et al, 2006, but see Pessoa et al, 2006Phillips et al, 2004), and binocular rivalry (Pasley et al, 2004;Williams et al, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Fearful expressions gain preferential access to awareness during continuous flash suppression.

Yang¹,

Zald²,

Blake³

2007

Emotion

342

418

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Rapid evaluation of ecologically relevant stimuli may lead to their preferential access to awareness. Continuous flash suppression allows assessment of affective processing under conditions in which stimuli have been rendered invisible due to the strongly suppressive nature of dynamic noise relative to static images. We investigated whether fearful expressions emerge from suppression into awareness more quickly than images of neutral or happy expressions. Fearful faces were consistently detected faster than neutral or happy faces. Responses to inverted faces were slower than those to upright faces, but showed the same effect of emotional expression, suggesting that some key feature or features in the inverted faces remained salient. When using stimuli solely representing the eyes, a similar bias for detecting fear emerged, implicating the importance of information from the eyes in the preconscious processing of fear expressions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Fearful expressions gain preferential access to awareness during continuous flash suppression.

Yang¹,

Zald²,

Blake³

2007

Emotion

342

418

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“…By contrast, the major cortical pathway relaying visual input to the amygdala does not show substantial activity and functional connectivity under the same conditions but does so during conscious perception of emotional stimuli (Pasley, Mayes, & Schultz, 2004;Williams et al, 2006). Not surprisingly, similar findings have been reported in patients with affective blindsight in response to unseen facial and bodily expressions and indicate that a functional subcortical pathway to the amygdala is engaged during nonconscious emotion perception (de Gelder et al, 2005;Morris et al, 2001;Pegna et al, 2005;Van den Stock et al, 2011.…”

Section: Functional and Structural Neuroanatomymentioning

confidence: 81%

From affective blindsight to emotional consciousness

Celeghin

Gelder

Tamietto

2015

Consciousness and Cognition

113

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a b s t r a c tFollowing destruction or denervation of the primary visual cortex (V1) cortical blindness ensues. Affective blindsight refers to the uncanny ability of such patients to respond correctly, or above chance level, to visual emotional expressions presented to their blind fields. Fifteen years after its original discovery, affective blindsight still fascinates neuroscientists and philosophers alike, as it offers a unique window on the vestigial properties of our visual system that, though present in the intact brain, tend to be unnoticed or even actively inhibited by conscious processes. Here we review available studies on affective blindsight with the intent to clarify its functional properties, neural bases and theoretical implications. Evidence converges on the role of subcortical structures of old evolutionary origin such as the superior colliculus, the pulvinar and the amygdala in mediating affective blindsight and nonconscious perception of emotions. We conclude that approaching consciousness, and its absence, from the vantage point of emotion processing may uncover important relations between the two phenomena, as consciousness may have evolved as an evolutionary specialization to interact with others and become aware of their social and emotional expressions.

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“…LeDoux (1994) proposed a dual-route model through which the amygdala receives input on emotional salience: a coarse but rapid subcortical input directly from the thalamus, and slower routes from cortical sensory areas. Beyond extensive findings from the animal literature, support for the rapid subcortical pathway in humans comes from numerous neuroimaging studies using facial expressions (Morris et al, 1999;Pasley et al, 2004;Reinders et al, 2006). reported decreased response time to fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) versus fearirrelevant stimuli (flowers and mushrooms) in a visual search task administered to healthy college students.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is critically involved in the detection of, and learning about, emotionally relevant stimuli, including events that have high social salience such as recognizing the meaning of facial expressions (Pasley et al, 2004;Vuilleumier & Pourtois, 2007). The "amygdala theory" of autism (Baron-Cohen et al, 2000; see also Bachevalier, 1996;Howard et al, 2000;Schultz et al, 2003) proposes that atypical social development in autism may arise from primary dysfunction in the amygdala and related "social brain" structures (Brothers, 1996;Skuse et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intact emotion facilitation for nonsocial stimuli in autism: Is amygdala impairment in autism specific for social information?

South

Ozonoff

Suchy

et al. 2007

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

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Atypical amygdala development may play a key role in the emergence of social disability and other symptoms of autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 2000;Schultz, 2005). The mechanisms by which this may occur have received little attention, however, and most support from behavioral and imaging studies has been concerned with socially relevant stimuli such as faces. Given the complexity of amygdala function and its known role in many other emotional tasks, we examined whether individuals with autism would demonstrate impaired performance on several tasks that have been shown to require activation of the amygdala but that do not have any explicit social meaning. Relative to a typical comparison group matched for age and IQ, our sample of 37 adolescents and adults with autism (mean age 5 19.7 years) demonstrated equivalent facilitation for perception and learning of emotionally relevant stimuli. On each of four tasks, there were significant main effects of emotion condition on performance for both groups. Future research regarding atypical amygdala function and emotion processing in autism should consider whether the response to nonsocial emotion factors (including negative valence or high arousal) may be intact, despite difficulties in responding to socially relevant stimuli. (JINS, 2008, 14, 42-54.)

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Subcortical Discrimination of Unperceived Objects during Binocular Rivalry

Cited by 262 publications

References 66 publications

Fearful expressions gain preferential access to awareness during continuous flash suppression.

Fearful expressions gain preferential access to awareness during continuous flash suppression.

From affective blindsight to emotional consciousness

Intact emotion facilitation for nonsocial stimuli in autism: Is amygdala impairment in autism specific for social information?

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