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Correlating Behavioral Responses to fMRI Signals from Human Prefrontal Cortex: Examining Cognitive Processes Using Task Analysis
Published on: June 20, 2012
Orbitofrontal cortex biases attention to emotional events
Kaisa M Hartikainen1, Keith H Ogawa, Robert T Knight
1Behavioral Neurology Research Unit, Department of Neurosciences and Rehabilitation, Tampere University Hospital and Medical School, University of Tampere, Finland. kaisa.hartikainen@uta.fi
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
|March 15, 2012
Summary
Orbitofrontal cortex damage impairs automatic emotional attention, shifting focus to voluntary target processing. This suggests orbitofrontal cortex disruption causes an attention imbalance, favoring target engagement over emotional novelty.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Affective Science
Background:
- The orbitofrontal (OF) cortex plays a crucial role in regulating complex behaviors, including emotion-attention interactions.
- Understanding how the OF cortex balances involuntary and voluntary attention is vital for comprehending cognitive control.
- Previous research suggests emotional stimuli can capture attention, potentially interfering with ongoing cognitive tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in modulating the interplay between emotion and attention.
- To examine how orbitofrontal cortex lesions affect the balance between automatic (involuntary) and controlled (voluntary) attention allocation.
- To compare the impact of affective distractors on subsequent voluntary attention in healthy individuals versus OF patients.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a lateralized visual discrimination task with task-irrelevant affective pictures (unpleasant, pleasant, neutral) preceding a neutral target.
- Employed reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) measures, specifically N2-P3a (involuntary attention) and N2-P3b (voluntary attention) components.
- Studied patients with orbitofrontal cortex lesions and healthy control subjects.
Main Results:
- Healthy subjects showed enhanced N2-P3a to emotional distractors and reduced N2-P3b to targets after emotional distractors, indicating automatic orienting interference.
- OF patients exhibited reduced N2-P3a to emotional distractors (impaired automatic orienting) and enhanced N2-P3b to targets after affective distractors (biased voluntary orienting).
- Behaviorally, OF patients showed faster responses to left visual field targets following pleasant distractors, suggesting valence- and hemisphere-dependent effects.
Conclusions:
- Orbitofrontal cortex damage disrupts the balance between voluntary and involuntary attention, favoring target processing over novelty/affect processing.
- Orbitofrontal cortex lesions lead to impaired automatic orienting to emotional stimuli and a bias towards voluntary attention.
- The influence of the orbitofrontal cortex on emotion-attention interaction is dependent on stimulus valence and processing hemisphere.
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