Red Diffuse Light Suppresses the Accelerated Perception of Fear

    Authors

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

    Comments

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    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

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