Papers by Patrik Vuilleumier
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2009
The emotional significance of sensory events may influence attention in a reflexive manner, but t... more The emotional significance of sensory events may influence attention in a reflexive manner, but these effects vary across paradigms and participants. Recent research indicates that specific circuits in the brain may serve to amplify neural responses to emotional stimuli, a modulation similar to attentional effects usually driven by endogenous goals. However, this modulation involves distinct sources in emotional systems such as the amygdala, and may thus operate partly independent of top-down control by attentional systems in frontoparietal cortices. It remains to be clarified to what degree these emotional effects are influenced by specific perceptual and emotional dimensions, automaticity and attentional resources, task goals or expectations, and individual personality traits.
Scientific Reports, Nov 16, 2018
The Acknowledgements section in this Article is incomplete. "This project was supported by fundin... more The Acknowledgements section in this Article is incomplete. "This project was supported by funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 267171 as well as from the Fyssen Foundation and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 660711. We are grateful to Corrado Corradi-Dell' Acqua, Gil Sharvit and Tomas Ros for their valuable advice on the task design and analysis. " should read: "This project was supported by funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 267171 as well as from the Fyssen Foundation. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 660711. We are grateful to Corrado Corradi-Dell' Acqua, Gil Sharvit and Tomas Ros for their valuable advice on the task design and analysis. "
Human Brain Mapping, Nov 24, 2020
Carry-over effects on brain states have been reported following emotional and cognitive events, p... more Carry-over effects on brain states have been reported following emotional and cognitive events, persisting even during subsequent rest. Here, we investigated such effects by identifying recurring co-activation patterns (CAPs) in neural networks at rest with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We compared carry-over effects on brain-wide CAPs at rest and their modulation after both affective and cognitive challenges. Healthy participants underwent fMRI scanning during emotional induction with negative valence and performed cognitive control tasks, each followed by resting periods. Several CAPs, overlapping with the default-mode (DMN), salience, dorsal attention, and social cognition networks were impacted by both the preceding events (movie or task) and the emotional valence of the experimental contexts (neutral or negative), with differential dynamic fluctuations over time. Temporal metrics of DMN-related CAPs were altered after exposure to negative emotional content (compared to neutral) and predicted changes in subjective affect on self-reported scores. In parallel, duration rates of another attention-related CAP increased with greater task difficulty during the preceding cognitive control condition, specifically in the negative context. These findings provide new insights on the anatomical organization and temporal inertia of functional brain networks, whose expression is differentially shaped by emotional states, presumably mediating adaptive homeostatic processes subsequent to behaviorally challenging events.
Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva), Mar 29, 2021
Laboratory for Behavioral Neurology and Imaging of Cognition; Department of Fundamental Neuroscie... more Laboratory for Behavioral Neurology and Imaging of Cognition; Department of Fundamental Neurosciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; 3 Swiss center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva; Medical Image Processing Lab, Institute of Bioengineering/Center for Neuroprosthetics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Research Square (Research Square), Sep 15, 2022
Laboratory for behavioral neurology and Imaging of cognition; b department of basic neurosciences... more Laboratory for behavioral neurology and Imaging of cognition; b department of basic neurosciences, university of Geneva; c Swiss center for affective sciences, university of Geneva; d department of psychiatry, university of Geneva; e faculty of psychology and educational sciences, university of Geneva; f department of radiology, centre hospitalier universitaire Vaudois (CHUV),
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Mar 29, 2021
Affective inertia represents the lasting impact of transient emotions at one time point on affect... more Affective inertia represents the lasting impact of transient emotions at one time point on affective state at a subsequent time point. Here we describe the neural underpinnings of inertia following negative emotions elicited by sad events in movies. Using a co-activation pattern analysis of dynamic functional connectivity, we examined the temporal expression and reciprocal interactions among brain-wide networks during movies and subsequent resting periods. Our findings revealed distinctive spatiotemporal expression of visual (VIS), default mode (DMN), central executive (CEN), and frontoparietal control (FPCN) networks both in negative movies and in rest periods following these movies. We also identified different reciprocal relationships among these networks, in transitions from movie to rest. While FPCN and DMN expression increased during and after negative movies, respectively, FPCN occurrences during the movie predicted lower DMN and higher CEN expression during subsequent rest after neutral movies, but this relationship was reversed after the elicitation of negative emotions. Changes in FPCN and DMN activity correlated with more negative subjective affect. These findings provide new insights into the transient interactions of intrinsic brain networks underpinning the inertia of negative emotions. More specifically, they describe a major role of FPCN in emotion elicitation processes, with prolonged impact on DMN activity in subsequent rest, presumably involved in emotion regulation and restoration of homeostatic balance after negative events.HighlightsModulations of dynamic functional brain connectivity are associated to the temporal inertia of negative emotions.Functional co-activations patterns (CAPs) during emotional episodes predict changes in spontaneous brain dynamics during subsequent resting state.Classical “task-rest” anticorrelations in network activity are reversed by negative emotions.
Current Biology, Oct 1, 2003
all subjects denied seeing two faces within the stimuli, a fact consistent with previous observat... more all subjects denied seeing two faces within the stimuli, a fact consistent with previous observations that few subjects perceive the hybrid nature of these stimuli [3].
Film fMRI has gained tremendous popularity in many areas of neuroscience. However, affective neur... more Film fMRI has gained tremendous popularity in many areas of neuroscience. However, affective neuroscience is somewhat behind in embracing this new field, even though films especially lend themselves to the study of how brain function gives rise to complex, dynamic, and multivariate emotions. In this review, we discuss the unique capabilities of film fMRI for research on emotion, while also providing a general guide through the process of conducting such research. We start with a brief overview of emotion theories as these inform the choice of which type of film material and annotation features are appropriate. Next, we discuss the role of films as experimental paradigms for emotion elicitation and address the process of annotating them. We then situate movie-based fMRI in the context of resting state and task fMRI approaches, and present an overview of results from extant studies so far with regards to fMRI compliance, robustness of responses across participants, as well as the capa...
NeuroImage, 2022
Attentional selection and the decision of where to make an eye-movement are driven by various fac... more Attentional selection and the decision of where to make an eye-movement are driven by various factors such as the representation of salience, task goal, and stimulus relevance, as well as expectations or predictions based on past experience. Brain systems implicated in these processes recruit cortico-subcortical areas including the Frontal Eye-Field (FEF), parietal cortex, or superior colliculus. How these areas interact to govern attention remains elusive. Priority maps of space have been observed in several brain regions, but the neural substrates where different sources of information are combined and integrated to guide attentional selection has not been elucidated. We investigated here the neural mechanisms subserving how reward cues influence the voluntary deployment of attention, in conditions where stimulus-driven capture and task-related goals compete for attention selection. Using fMRI in a visual search task in n=23 participants, we found a selective modulation of FEF by the reward value of distractors during attentional shifts, particularly after high-predictive cueing to invalid locations. Reward information also modulated FEF connectivity to superior colliculus, striatum, and visual cortex. We conclude that FEF may occupy a central position within brain circuits integrating different sources of top-down biases for the generation of spatial saliency maps and guidance of selective attention.
Neuropsychopharmacology, 2021
Alterations in activity and connectivity of brain circuits implicated in emotion processing and e... more Alterations in activity and connectivity of brain circuits implicated in emotion processing and emotion regulation have been observed during resting-state for different clinical phases of bipolar disorders (BD), but longitudinal investigations across different mood states in the same patients are still rare. Furthermore, measuring dynamics of functional connectivity patterns offers a powerful method to explore changes in the brain’s intrinsic functional organization across mood states. We used a novel co-activation pattern (CAP) analysis to explore the dynamics of amygdala connectivity at rest in a cohort of 20 BD patients prospectively followed-up and scanned across distinct mood states: euthymia (20 patients; 39 sessions), depression (12 patients; 18 sessions), or mania/hypomania (14 patients; 18 sessions). We compared them to 41 healthy controls scanned once or twice (55 sessions). We characterized temporal aspects of dynamic fluctuations in amygdala connectivity over the whole b...
Neuroimaging studies have shown carry-over effects on brain activity and connectivity following b... more Neuroimaging studies have shown carry-over effects on brain activity and connectivity following both emotional and cognitive events, persisting even during subsequent rest. Here, we investigate the functional dynamics of such effects by identifying recurring co-activation patterns (CAPs). Using the precuneus as seed region, we compare carrying-over effects on brain-wide CAPs and their modulation after both affective and cognitive challenges. Female volunteers (n=19) underwent fMRI scanning during emotional induction with sad movie clips, and executive control tasks, each followed by resting periods. Several CAPs, overlapping the default mode, salience, attention, and social cognition networks were impacted by both the preceding events (movie or task) and their valence (neutral or negative), with differential fluctuations over time. Specifically, a modulation of CAPs in posterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex was observed after exposure to negatively valenced emotional...
PLOS ONE, 2016
Unconscious processes are often assumed immune from attention influence. Recent behavioral studie... more Unconscious processes are often assumed immune from attention influence. Recent behavioral studies suggest however that the processing of subliminal information can be influenced by temporal attention. To examine the neural mechanisms underlying these effects, we used a stringent masking paradigm together with fMRI to investigate how temporal attention modulates the processing of unseen (masked) faces. Participants performed a gender decision task on a visible neutral target face, preceded by a masked prime face that could vary in gender (same or different than target) and emotion expression (neutral or fearful). We manipulated temporal attention by instructing participants to expect targets to appear either early or late during the stimulus sequence. Orienting temporal attention to subliminal primes influenced response priming by masked faces, even when gender was incongruent. In addition, gender-congruent primes facilitated responses regardless of attention while gender-incongruent primes reduced accuracy when attended. Emotion produced no differential effects. At the neural level, incongruent and temporally unexpected primes increased brain response in regions of the fronto-parietal attention network, reflecting greater recruitment of executive control and reorienting processes. Congruent and expected primes produced higher activations in fusiform cortex, presumably reflecting facilitation of perceptual processing. These results indicate that temporal attention can influence subliminal processing of face features, and thus facilitate information integration according to task-relevance regardless of conscious awareness. They also suggest that task-congruent information between prime and target may facilitate response priming even when temporal attention is not selectively oriented to the prime onset time.
Nature Neuroscience, 2003
High and low spatial frequency information in visual images is processed by distinct neural chann... more High and low spatial frequency information in visual images is processed by distinct neural channels. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans, we show dissociable roles of such visual channels for processing faces and emotional fearful expressions. Neural responses in fusiform cortex, and effects of repeating the same face identity upon fusiform activity, were greater with intact or high-spatial-frequency face stimuli than with low-frequency faces, regardless of emotional expression. In contrast, amygdala responses to fearful expressions were greater for intact or low-frequency faces than for high-frequency faces. An activation of pulvinar and superior colliculus by fearful expressions occurred specifically with lowfrequency faces, suggesting that these subcortical pathways may provide coarse fear-related inputs to the amygdala.
Object Recognition, Attention, and Action
Cognitive Brain Research, 2003
To investigate whether the processing of faces and emotional facial expression can be modulated b... more To investigate whether the processing of faces and emotional facial expression can be modulated by spatial attention, ERPs were recorded in response to stimulus arrays containing two faces and two non-face stimuli (houses). In separate trials, attention was focused on the face pair or on the house pair, and facial expression was either fearful or neutral. When faces were attended, a greater frontal positivity in response to arrays containing fearful faces was obtained, starting about 100 ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, with faces located outside the attentional focus, this emotional expression effect was completely eliminated. This differential result demonstrates for the first time a strong attentional gating of brain processes involved in the analysis of emotional facial expression. It is argued that while an initial detection of emotionally relevant events mediated by the amygdala may occur pre-attentively, subsequent stages of emotional processing require focal spatial attention. The face-sensitive N170 component was unaffected by emotional facial expression, but N170 amplitudes were enhanced when faces were attended, suggesting that spatial attention can modulate the structural encoding of faces.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2005
Emotional processes not only serve to record the value of sensory events, but also to elicit adap... more Emotional processes not only serve to record the value of sensory events, but also to elicit adaptive responses and modify perception. Recent research using functional brain imaging in human subjects has begun to reveal neural substrates by which sensory processing and attention can be modulated by the affective significance of stimuli. The amygdala plays a crucial role in providing both direct and indirect top-down signals on sensory pathways, which can influence the representation of emotional events, especially when related to threat. These modulatory effects implement specialized mechanisms of 'emotional attention' that might supplement but also compete with other sources of top-down control on perception. This work should help to elucidate the neural processes and temporal dynamics governing the integration of cognitive and affective influences in attention and behaviour.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2007
Visual processing is not determined solely by retinal inputs. Attentional modulation can arise wh... more Visual processing is not determined solely by retinal inputs. Attentional modulation can arise when the internal attentional state (current task) of the observer alters visual processing of the same stimuli. This can influence visual cortex, boosting neural responses to an attended stimulus. Emotional modulation can also arise, when affective properties (emotional significance) of stimuli, rather than their strictly visual properties, influence processing. This too can boost responses in visual cortex, as for fear-associated stimuli. Both attentional and emotional modulation of visual processing may reflect distant influences upon visual cortex, exerted by brain structures outside the visual system per se . Hence, these modulations may provide windows onto causal interactions between distant but interconnected brain regions. We review recent evidence, noting both similarities and differences between attentional and emotional modulation. Both can affect visual cortex, but can reflect...
Neuropsychologia, 2002
This study examined whether differential neural responses are evoked by emotional stimuli with an... more This study examined whether differential neural responses are evoked by emotional stimuli with and without conscious perception, in a patient with visual neglect and extinction. Stimuli were briefly shown in either right, left, or both fields during event-related fMRI. On bilateral trials, either a fearful or neutral left face appeared with a right house, and it could either be extinguished from awareness or perceived. Seen faces in left visual field (LVF) activated primary visual cortex in the damaged right-hemisphere and bilateral fusiform gyri. Extinguished left faces increased activity in striate and extrastriate cortex, compared with right houses only. Critically, fearful faces activated the left amygdala and extrastriate cortex both when seen and when extinguished; as well as bilateral orbitofrontal and intact right superior parietal areas. Comparison of perceived versus extinguished faces revealed no difference in amygdala for fearful faces. Conscious perception increased activity in fusiform, parietal and prefrontal areas of the left-hemisphere, irrespective of emotional expression; while a differential emotional response to fearful faces occurring specifically with awareness was found in bilateral parietal, temporal, and frontal areas. These results demonstrate that amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex can be activated by emotional stimuli even without awareness after parietal damage; and that substantial unconscious residual processing can occur within spared brain areas well beyond visual cortex, despite neglect and extinction.
Neuropsychologia, 2012
Unilateral spatial neglect is a neurological disorder characterized by impaired orienting of atte... more Unilateral spatial neglect is a neurological disorder characterized by impaired orienting of attention to stimuli located in the contralesional space, typically following right-hemisphere damage. Neuropsychological investigations in the past two decades have demonstrated that neglect is caused by deficits affecting a widespread cortico-subcortical fronto-parietal network controlling spatial attention, but usually sparing early sensory pathways. As a consequence, certain residual abilities in sensory processing remain intact and still take place for stimuli in the neglected space, such as the extraction and organization of coherent or meaningful object features. Moreover, these residual abilities can alleviate inattention symptoms when contralesional stimuli are perceptually or biologically salient. Here we review recent studies suggesting that the emotional content of stimuli may also be processed despite impaired attention towards contralesional space, and that such processing may act to enhance attention and partly reduce neglect for these stimuli, relative to similar but emotionally neutral stimuli. For example, faces with emotional expressions, voices with emotional prosody, as well as pictures of scenes or even spiders have been found to be less severely extinguished from awareness in conditions of bilateral stimulations, and/or lead to fewer omissions in search tasks with multiple distracters. Gaze cues and reward learning might also produce similar effects. Altogether, these findings suggest that emotionally significant information is not only extracted from stimuli at neglected locations through spared pathways, but can also induce emotional biases in attention that partly counteract the abnormal spatial biases caused by fronto-parietal damage. We discuss results from neuropsychology and neuroimaging research suggesting that specific mechanisms for emotional attention might exist, centered on the amygdala and other limbic regions, and that these mechanisms can operate partly independent from other circuits controlling spatial and object-based attention. Although we are only beginning to understand these interactive effects of emotion and attention and to identify their neuroanatomical substrates, we believe that a deeper knowledge of such mechanisms and their conditions of optimal operation will help develop or improve therapeutic strategies in neglect patients.
Neuropsychologia, 2008
In normal observers, visual search is facilitated for targets with salient attributes. We compare... more In normal observers, visual search is facilitated for targets with salient attributes. We compared how two different types of cue (expression and colour) may influence search for face targets, in healthy subjects (n = 27) and right brain-damaged patients with left spatial neglect (n = 13). The target faces were defined by their identity (singleton among a crowd of neutral faces) but could either be neutral (like other faces), or have a different emotional expression (fearful or happy), or a different colour (red-tinted). Healthy subjects were the fastest for detecting the colour-cued targets, but also showed a significant facilitation for emotionally cued targets, relative to neutral faces differing from other distracter faces by identity only. Healthy subjects were also faster overall for target faces located on the left, as compared to the right side of the display. In contrast, neglect patients were slower to detect targets on the left (contralesional) relative to the right (ipsilesional) side. However, they showed the same pattern of cueing effects as healthy subjects on both sides of space; while their best performance was also found for faces cued by colour, they showed a significant advantage for faces cued by expression, relative to the neutral condition. These results indicate that despite impaired attention towards the left hemispace, neglect patients may still show an intact influence of both low-level colour cues and emotional expression cues on attention, suggesting that neural mechanisms responsible for these effects are partly separate from fronto-parietal brain systems controlling spatial attention during search.
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Papers by Patrik Vuilleumier