Arousal-Biased Competition in Perception and Memory

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(03/02/2024, 17:31:38 )

Objects in visual field compete for neural representation & attention

“The biased-competition theory of attention accounts for these object-based effects by assuming that objects in the visual field compete for neural representation (Bundesen, 1990; Bundesen, Habekost, & Kyllingsbaek, 2005; Deco & Rolls, 2005; Desimone, 1998; Desimone & Duncan, 1995; Kastner & Ungerleider, 2001; Miller & Cohen, 2001).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 115)

“First, the competitive nature of visual processing means that a stronger neural response to any one visual object comes at the expense of weaker responses to others. Second, top–down goals or signals bias competition. Third, competition is integrated across brain regions, so that a visual object that dominates in the visual cortex will likely dominate in other regions such as the prefrontal and parietal cortices.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 115)

“fMRI studies also reveal neural response patterns consistent with biased competition (e.g., Kastner, De Weerd, Desimone, & Ungerleider, 1998; Reddy, Kanwisher, & VanRullen, 2009). As in the single-cell recording studies (Chelazzi et al., 1998; Chelazzi, Miller, Duncan, & Desimone, 2001), directing attention to one of multiple objects reduces the suppressive effects of the competing objects, bringing activation closer to levels seen with just one object presented alone (Kastner et al., 1998).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 116)

Perceptual arousal enhances processing

“Priority is determined by bottom–up perceptual salience and top–down relevance. Thus, arousal should enhance processing and consolidation of high priority information, regardless of whether the information has priority because of its bottom–up attention grabbing nature or because of top–down goals such as the desire to remember it later.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 128)

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) modulates activity in sensory regions (check literature)

“During directed attention, a frontoparietal attentional network (including the anterior cingulate cortex; ACC) generates top–down biasing signals that modulate activity in sensory regions (Dehaene, Kerszberg, & Changeux, 1998; Hampshire, Duncan, & Owen, 2007; Hon, Epstein, Owen, & Duncan, 2006; Hung, Driver, & Walsh, 2005; Miller & Cohen, 2001) amplifies the effects of competition, improving perception of high priority information and weakening perception of low priority information” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 116)

Perceptual contrast part of Bottom-up perception

“The bottom–up route to priority is via perceptual contrast. Targets in an array ‘‘pop out’’ when they differ from their context, whether that difference is in orientation, motion, luminance, or color (Nothdurft, 2000). Using this fundamental rule about what draws attention, computational models can predict where eye fixations will land on an image by analyzing the image’s center-surround contrast at every location (Berg, Boehnke, Marino, Munoz, & Itti, 2009; Itti & Koch, 2000). In these salience map models, the center-surround contrast is computed for a variety of different features (e.g., color, intensity, orientation, flicker, and motion) at different spatial scales and all the separate estimates of within-feature contrast are assembled into a global saliency map.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 116)

contrast -> activation of center leads to suppression of periphery

“In these models, a center-surround differentiation process mimics properties of local cortical inhibition. When the contrast is high between the center and the surround, activation for the center is increased and activation for the surround is inhibited. The result of several iterations of this competitive process is that only a few locations on the feature maps remain active (Fig. 1A). However, if the image consists of a set of items with equal contrast (Fig. 1B), the center-surround competition process leads all peaks to inhibit each other suppressing the entire map.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 116)

Perceptual contrast, goal relevance, novelty, …

“Although perceptual contrast and goal relevance are independent factors, other predictors of priority are determined by interactions of bottom–up perception and top–down reflection. For instance, novel and unexpected stimuli are prioritized due to the mismatch between perceptual input and prior knowledge (Itti & Baldi, 2009; Ranganath & Rainer, 2003).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 117)

Bias towards arousing picture

“For instance, when a neutral and an arousing picture are simultaneously presented, one’s eyes are more likely to first fixate on the arousing picture and then fixate more frequently on it (Knight et al., 2007; LaBar, Mesulam, Gitelman, & Weintraub, 2000; Rosler et al., 2005)” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 117)

Higher visual processing of emotional arousing stimuli

“Viewing emotional stimuli also increases activity in visual brain areas associated with object recognition, such as the fusiform and inferotemporal cortices (Sabatinelli, Flaisch, Bradley, Fitzsimmons, & Lang, 2004; Taylor, Liberzon, & Koeppe, 2000), and it leads to an early posterior negativity in eventrelated brain potential studies (Schupp, Flaisch, Stockburger, & Junghofer, 2006), suggesting prioritized visual processing of emotional stimuli.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 117)

Stimuli higher in contrast are recalled more often - especially during arousal

“To test whether arousal increases the competitive advantage of high contrast (and therefore salient) over low contrast (and therefore less salient) stimuli, we played arousing or nonarousing sounds before briefly presenting a circular array of eight letters (Fig. 2; Sutherland & Mather, 2011). Three of the letters were printed in high contrast dark gray on the white background, whereas the other five letters were printed in lower contrast gray. Participants then reported which letters they saw. As expected, participants were more likely to report the high contrast letters than the low contrast letters. More interesting, however, was that hearing an arousing sound before viewing the letters significantly increased reporting of high contrast letters and decreased reporting of low contrast letters. Thus, arousal amplified the competitive advantage of perceptually salient stimuli and the competitive disadvantage of less salient stimuli.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 118)

Amygdala possibly mediating how arousal drives perception and bias toward more salient stimuli

“As previously stated in this article, emotional arousal amplifies the effects of top–down attentional goals (Phelps et al., 2006; Schupp et al., 2007). One possibility is that the amygdala drives these arousal effects by enhancing the impact of top–down attentional goals in the frontoparietal network.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 121)

“Thus, the amygdala may modulate activity in the frontoparietal attention network to bias attention toward high priority stimuli (see also Mohanty, Egner, Monti, & Mesulam, 2009). This possibility fits with evidence that the amygdala activates when stimuli are potentially goal relevant (e.g., Cunningham, Raye, & Johnson, 2005; Sander, Grafman, & Zalla, 2003) or have high perceptual salience within an emotional context (Attar, Muller, Andersen, Buchel, & Rose, 2010).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 121)

Emotionally arousing stimuli can distract

“However, emotionally arousing stimuli can also distract people from their current Fig. 4. Example stimuli used in Bannerman et al. (2008). Stimulus (a) was presented to one eye while stimulus (b), (c), or (d) was presented to the other eye. Arousal-Biased Competition 121 goal, as arousing stimuli attract attention themselves.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 121)

During distraction due to arousing stimuli, Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) or Inferior Frontal Cortex might help modulate attention

“When arousing stimuli distract from current task goals, interactions between the amygdala and brain regions involved in resolving interference or conflict (such as the ACC or left inferior frontal cortex) may help to bias attention toward the emotionally arousing stimuli, or may help to counter the emotional distraction. In general, the ACC activates in situations involving conflict in information processing (Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter, 2004; Carter & van Veen, 2007).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 122)

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) “activates in situations involving conflict in information processing”

“In general, the ACC activates in situations involving conflict in information processing (Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter, 2004; Carter & van Veen, 2007).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 122)

“Thus, the ACC may help disengage attention from other stimuli and redirect it toward emotionally arousing stimuli.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 122)

Arousal more important for attention than valence

“As arousal activates the amygdala regardless of whether it is elicited by positive or negative stimuli (e.g., Anderson et al., 2003; Cunningham, Raye, & Johnson, 2004; Hamann, Ely, Hoffman, & Kilts, 2002; Mather et al., 2004), it makes sense that positive and negative sources of arousal would have similar effects on how the amygdala biases attention. Indeed, previous studies suggest that arousal is more of a critical factor than valence in biasing competition. Both positive and negative arousing stimuli affect attentional selectivity—for instance, in binocular rivalry (Sheth & Pham, 2008) and in the attentional blink (Anderson, 2005; Keil & Ihssen, 2004).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 127)

“And negative and positive arousal also have similar effects on long-term memory consolidation;” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 127)

Higher activation for negative valence than positive valence

“Neuroimaging studies have found that negative items that are later remembered recruit brain regions involved in sensory processing more than positive items that are later remembered (Kensinger & Schacter, 2008; Mickley & Kensinger, 2008), whereas the encoding of positive items is associated with greater activation in regions associated with semantic or conceptual processing (Kensinger & Schacter, 2008).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 127)

At low arousal, difference in valence might influence processing differently

“Furthermore, at low levels of arousal, positive and negative affect may influence perceptual processing differently.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 128)

“and thus high arousal positive Arousal-Biased Competition 127 stimuli seem to enhance memory for stimuli presented in the central task-relevant location but not memory for peripheral stimuli—a finding that is consistent with ABC predictions.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 127)

Arousal-Biased Competition (ABC): arousal modulates strength of competing mental representations

“What we call arousal-biased competition (ABC) is the notion that arousal (whether elicited by external stimuli, internal thoughts, or stress hormones) modulates the strength of competing mental representations, enhancing memory for items that dominate the contest for selective attention.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 114)

[[Frederickson, Barbara]]

“In addition, others have found evidence that exposure to positive stimuli broadens cognitive processes, including one’s scope of attention (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005), which results in increased perceptual processing of task-irrelevant stimuli (Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007).” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 127)

“Previous research shows that both bottom–up and top–down factors bias competition in favor of high priority stimuli.”

(Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 114)

“The brain’s ability to prioritize information allows us to think and take action without being overwhelmed by external stimuli or internal thoughts and feelings.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 114)

“One intuitive metaphor of selective attention is that of a spotlight, in which attention is focused on one region of the visual field, with stimuli outside that region having little influence (Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980)” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 115)

“This reveals both top–down enhancement and suppression of mental representations of the perceived scenes. Furthermore, internal representations of previously perceived stimuli are also enhanced if they are goal relevant or suppressed if they are goal irrelevant (e.g., Johnson & Johnson, 2009b). ABC predicts that arousal will increase priority for goal-relevant stimuli and decrease priority for goal-irrelevant stimuli.” (Mather and Sutherland, 2011, p. 117)