Paying attention to emotion: an fMRI investigation of cognitive and emotional stroop tasks.

Full Abstract

In this research, we investigated the degree to which brain systems involved in ignoring emotionally salient information differ from those involved in ignoring nonemotional information. The design allowed examination of regional brain activity, using fMRI during color-word and emotional Stroop tasks. Twelve participants indicated the color of words while ignoring word meaning in conditions in which neutral words were contrasted to emotionally negative, emotionally positive, and incongruent color words. Dorsolateral frontal lobe activity was increased by both negative and incongruent color words, indicating a common system for maintaining an attentional set in the presence of salient distractors. In posterior regions of the brain, activity depended on the nature of the information to be ignored. Ignoring color-incongruent words increased left parietal activity and decreased parahippocampal gyrus activity, whereas ignoring negative emotional words increased bilateral occipito-temporal activity and decreased amygdala activity. The results indicate that emotion and attention are intimately related via a network of regions that monitor for salient information, maintain attention on the task, suppress irrelevant information, and select appropriate responses.

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Author information

Author/s: Compton, Rebecca J (RJ); Banich, Marie T (MT); Mohanty, Aprajita (A); Milham, Michael P (MP); Herrington, John (J); Miller, Gregory A (GA); Scalf, Paige E (PE); Webb, Andrew (A); Heller, Wendy (W);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania 19041, USA. rcompton(-atsign-)haverford.edu

Grants: MH19554 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS) ; R01 MH61358 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS) ; R21 DA14111 (Agency:NIDA NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience (Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jun; vol 3 (issue 2) : pp 81-96

Dates: Created 2003/08/28; Completed 2003/10/07; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12943324, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Color
Emotions - physiology
Female
Humans

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