Title

Red Diffuse Light Suppresses the Accelerated Perception of Fear

Authors

Authors

G. L. West; A. K. Anderson; J. S. Bedwell;J. Pratt

Comments

Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

Abbreviated Journal Title

Psychol. Sci.

Keywords

magnocellular; emotion; evolution; action; TEMPORAL-ORDER; SUPERIOR COLLICULUS; CORTICAL PATHWAYS; VISUAL-ATTENTION; BACKGROUND COLOR; RHESUS-MONKEY; REACTION-TIME; M-CHANNELS; AMYGDALA; TRANSIENT; Psychology, Multidisciplinary

Abstract

Prioritization of affective events may occur via two parallel pathways originating from the retina-a parvocellular (P) pathway projecting to ventral-stream structures responsible for object recognition or a faster and phylogenetically older magnocellular (M) pathway projecting to dorsal-stream structures responsible for localization and action. It has previously been demonstrated that retinal exposure to red diffuse light suppresses M-cell neural activity. We tested whether the fast propagation along the dorsal-action pathway drives an accelerated conduction of fear-based content. Using a visual prior-entry procedure, we assessed accelerated stimulus perception while either suppressing the M pathway with red diffuse light or leaving it unaffected with green diffuse light. We show that the encoding of fearful faces is accelerated, but not when M-channel activity is suppressed, revealing a dissociation that implicates a privileged neural link between emotion and action that begins at the retina.

Journal Title

Psychological Science

Volume

21

Issue/Number

7

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

992

Last Page

999

WOS Identifier

WOS:000285453600016

ISSN

0956-7976

Share

COinS