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Fleeting images: A new look at early emotion discrimination
Author(s) -
Junghöfer Markus,
Bradley Margaret M.,
Elbert Thomas R.,
Lang Peter J.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.3820175
Subject(s) - psychology , rapid serial visual presentation , cognitive psychology , posterior parietal cortex , meaning (existential) , focus (optics) , cognition , neuroscience , physics , optics , psychotherapist
The visual brain quickly sorted stimuli for emotional impact despite high‐speed presentation (3 or 5 per s) in a sustained, serial torrent of 700 complex pictures. Event‐related potentials, recorded with a dense electrode array, showed selective discrimination of emotionally arousing stimuli from less affective content. Primary sources of this activation were over the occipital cortices, extending to right parietal cortex, suggesting a processing focus in the posterior visual system. Emotion discrimination was independent of formal pictorial properties (color, brightness, spatial frequency, and complexity). The data support the hypothesis of a very short‐term conceptual memory store (M. C. Potter, 1999)—shown here to include a fleeting but reliable assessment of affective meaning.