The current research examines individual differences in flexible emotional attention. In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between individual differences in cardiac vagal tone and top-down and bottom-up processes associated with emotional attention. To help determine the role of cortical and subcortical mechanisms underlying top-down and bottom-up emotional attention, fearful fa...

To investigate whether the processing of emotional expression for faces presented within foveal vision is modulated by spatial attention, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to stimulus arrays containing one fearful or neutral face at fixation, which was flanked by a pair of peripheral bilateral lines. When attention was focused on the central face, an enhanced positivity ...

Background Parkinson's disease (PD) patients exhibit deficits in emotional recognition and expression abilities, including emotional faces and voices. The aim of this study was to explore emotional processing in pre-deep brain stimulation (pre-DBS) PD patients using two sensory modalities (visual and auditory). Methods Fifteen PD patients who needed DBS surgery and 15 healthy, age- and gender...

The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experi...

Faces are important in both human communication and computer-mediated communication. In this study, I analyze the influence of emotional expressions in faces on knowledge-sharing decisions in a computer-mediated environment. I suggest that faces can be used for affect infusion and affect detection, which increases the effectiveness of knowledge-management systems. Using the affect infusion mode...

As documented by Darwin 150 years ago, emotion expressed in human faces readily draws our attention and promotes sympathetic emotional reactions. How do such reactions to the expression of emotion affect our goal-directed actions? Despite the substantial advance made in the neural mechanisms of both cognitive control and emotional processing, it is not yet known well how these two systems inter...

BACKGROUND States of depression are associated with increased sensitivity to negative events. For this novel study, we have assessed the relationship between the number of depressive episodes and the dysfunctional processing of emotional facial expressions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We used a visual emotional oddball paradigm to manipulate the processing of emotional information while ev...

Exposure to media violence has been associated with decreased empathy and increased aggressive behavior. One possible mediator for this relationship may be emotional face processing; however, little is known about how media violence may influence the neural correlates of emotional face processing. Twenty-six participants were shown violent and nonviolent movie clips during separate testing sess...

The current research examines individual differences in flexible emotional attention. In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between individual differences in cardiac vagal tone and top-down and bottom-up processes associated with emotional attention. To help determine the role of cortical and subcortical mechanisms underlying the top-down and bottomup emotional attention, fearful...

There is an ongoing debate concerning the extent to which emotional faces automatically attract attention. Using a single-target Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) methodology, it has been found that presentation of task-irrelevant positive or negative emotionally salient stimuli (e.g., negative scenes or erotic pictures) results in a temporary inability to process target stimuli (emotion-...