How Arousal Modulates the Visual Contrast Sensitivity Function

Overview

Journal Emotion

Publisher American Psychological Association

Specialty Psychology

Date 2014 Jun 17

PMID 24932842

Citations 24

Authors

Tae-Ho Lee

Jongsoo Baek

Zhong-Lin Lu

Mara Mather

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Recent evidence indicates that emotion enhances contrast thresholds in subsequent visual perception (Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006) and perceptual sensitivity for low-spatial frequency but not high-spatial frequency targets (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009b). However, these studies just report responses to various frequencies at a fixed contrast level or responses to various contrasts at a fixed frequency. In the current study, we measured the full contrast sensitivity function as a function of emotional arousal in order to investigate potential interactions between spatial frequency and contrast. We used a Bayesian adaptive inference with a trial-to-trial information gain strategy (Lesmes, Lu, Baek, & Albright, 2010) and a fear-conditioned stimulus to manipulate arousal level. The spatial frequency at which people showed peak contrast sensitivity shifted to lower spatial frequencies in the arousing condition compared with the nonarousing condition and people had greater contrast sensitivity function bandwidth in the arousing than in the nonarousing condition.

Citing Articles

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Pupil Size Is Sensitive to Low-Level Stimulus Features, Independent of Arousal-Related Modulation.

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Acute Alcohol Intake Affects Internal Additive Noise and the Perceptual Template in Visual Perception.

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Olfactory Stimulation Modulates Visual Perception Without Training.

Tsushima Y, Nishino Y, Ando H Front Neurosci. 2021; 15:642584.

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fMRI-based detection of alertness predicts behavioral response variability.

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