Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Proudfit, Greg | Canli, Turhan | Leung, Hoi-Chung | Urry, Heather.
Date
2015-08-01
Keywords
attention, attentional deployment, emotion, emotion regulation, fMRI | Psychology
Department
Department of Biopsychology.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77009
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Attentional deployment is an emotion regulation strategy that involves shifting attentional focus towards or away from particular aspects of emotional stimuli. Previous studies have highlighted the prevalence of attentional deployment and demonstrated that it can have a significant impact on affect and psychophysiology. However, relatively little is known about the neural basis of attentional deployment, or how individual differences impact the use and success of this strategy. In two separate fMRI studies, visual attention was directed to more or less arousing portions of unpleasant images. For five subjects from Study 1, and all subjects from Study 2, fMRI and eye-tracking data were collected simultaneously. Together these studies examined three aims: (1) the impact of attentional deployment on negative affect and neural activation, (2) the functional connectivity patterns associated with attentional deployment and their relation to individual differences in eye gaze behavior, and (3) gender differences in neural activation during emotional processing and attentional deployment. Results suggested that focusing on non-arousing, compared to arousing, portions of unpleasant images was associated with reduced negative affect, and with increased activation in fronto-parietal networks associated with inhibitory and attentional control, and reduced amygdala activation. Further, focusing on non-arousing regions, compared to freely viewing unpleasant images, resulted in increased functional connectivity between the precuneus and the amygdala; the degree of connectivity was positively related to visual compliance and trait reappraisal. Finally, gender differences were observed when comparing the free viewing of unpleasant to neutral images; compared to men, women demonstrated greater activation in regions associated with enhanced emotional processing including prefrontal regions and the amygdala, despite no gender differences in visual attention to emotional information. However, these differences appeared to be at least partially due to greater activation in emotion-related regions, including the amygdala, for males during the neutral (baseline) condition. There were no gender differences in brain activation during the unpleasant arousing focus, unpleasant non-arousing focus, or neutral focus conditions. Together, these studies suggest that visual attentional deployment is an effective emotion regulation strategy for both males and females that may critically depend on functional relationships between parietal regions and the amygdala. | 125 pages
Recommended Citation
Ferri, Jamie, "Attentional Deployment within Unpleasant Pictures: Neural Correlates & Functional Connectivity" (2015). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2871.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2871