How does emotional processing guide attention?

Our working hypothesis is that emotional stimuli, while requiring attention, have a competitive advantage over neutral stimuli in gaining access to processing resources so that they are prioritized. Such view is consistent with behavioral findings showing that emotional stimuli more readily attract attention and interfere with ongoing tasks. Just as attention can favor the processing of attended items, so too do stimuli with emotional valence. Thus, we propose that emotional stimuli operate like attention. If this view is correct, just as attention enhances activity within visual cortex to items at attended locations, so too should emotional pictures evoke stronger responses in visual cortex than neutral ones. This is indeed the case, as shown by our own work and that of other investigators. We propose that the increased activation produced by emotional stimuli in visual cortex reflects emotional modulation by which the processing of this stimulus category is favored. Moreover, we suggest that, like attentional modulation of activity in visual cortex, emotional modulation can provide "top-down" influence on visual processing areas, including very early visual areas, such as V1 and V2. In this manner, visual perception would be colored by the valence and significance of incoming visual stimuli.