Neurophysiological evidence for emotional attention modulation depending on goal relevance

Although threat-related stimuli can capture attention automatically, recent findings have challenged this assumption by showing that goal rather than threat can be prioritized and eventually guide attentional control. In this study, we used high density electroencephalography (EEG) in 40 participants while peripheral emotional faces (either fear or happiness) were either goal-relevant or irrelevant during a dot-probe task (DPT). The use of peripheral vision was established by eye-tracking. Both the face specific N170 component and the subsequent Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) were enhanced by fear at the cue level, yet the latter one only when fear was goal relevant. Importantly, we found that early on following target onset at the P1 level, both value and goal relevance drove spatial attention and interacted with each other such that when they were goal-relevant, fearful faces captured attention less than when they were not. These results suggest that emotional attention is flexible and it can be influenced by the goal relevance of emotion. Moreover, they shed light on the electrophysiological manifestations of this flexibility and dovetail with the assumption that sensory gain control effects occurring in the visual cortex depending on attentional control are multiplexed and determined by both value and goal.