PMID: 30019707Jul 19, 2018Paper

The influence of mood on visual perception of neutral material

Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis
Miroslaw WyczesanyAgnieszka Adamczyk

Abstract

In the study we investigated how current mood affects spontaneous perceptual processes of neutral stimuli of low‑arousal, unrelated to any specific task. Two separate but similar procedures were carried out: one using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the other using electroencephalography based source localization. In both experiments, sessions of passive viewing of neutral pictures were preceded by either a negative or positive mood induction. In response to neutral stimuli, we observed higher activation of visual areas after positive mood induction and lower activations in medial prefrontal and right frontotemporal regions after negative mood induction. We conclude that in relatively safe laboratory conditions, after being exposed to negative emotional content, automatic processes of affective control are recruited by the prefrontal cortex. This results in attenuation of processing of incoming stimuli, as the stimuli do not carry salient information with respect to bottom‑up or top‑down processes. The observed effects may therefore represent an implicit mechanism of perceptual modulation.

Related Concepts

Related Feeds

Brain Circuits in Emotional Learning

The neuronal circuits within the cortico-limbic brain regions form networks that mediate emotional behavior. Areas specific to emotional learning include the basal amygdala and sublenticular extended amygdala region along with a supplemental motor area. Discover the latest research on brain circuits in emotional learning here.