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ABSTRACT: The emotions displayed by others can be cues to predict their behavior. Happy expressions are usually linked to positive consequences, whereas angry faces are associated with probable negative outcomes. However, there are situations in which the expectations we generate do not hold. Here, control mechanisms must be put in place. We designed an interpersonal game in which participants received good or bad economic offers from several partners. A cue indicated whether the emotion of their partner could be trusted or not. Trustworthy partners with happy facial expressions were cooperative, and angry partners did not cooperate. Untrustworthy partners cooperated when their expression was angry and did not cooperate when they displayed a happy emotion. Event-Related Potential (ERP) results showed that executive attention already influenced the frontal N1. The brain initially processed emotional expressions regardless of their contextual meaning but by the N300, associated to affective evaluation, emotion was modulated by control mechanisms. Our results suggest a cascade of processing that starts with the instantiation of executive attention, continues by a default processing of emotional features and is then followed by an interaction between executive attention and emotional factors before decision-making and motor stages.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 07/2012; · 6.13 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The goal of the present study was to explore whether endogenous attention can be oriented to different perceptual categories and to examine how these expectations modulate visual stimulus processing. We designed a cueing paradigm that prepared participants, on a trial-by-trial basis, for the most likely stimulus category of the target, which could be either a face or a word. Participants were asked to discriminate the gender of the stimuli, regardless of their category. We measured participants' brain activity by means of a high-density electroencephalographic recording system to investigate the neural correlates of orienting attention to faces and words. As expected, we observed a behavioural facilitation for valid compared to invalid trials. In addition, target expectations influenced stimulus processing at several points in time. Most importantly, attention modulated the lateralized N170 component in a category-specific fashion. These results show that, at least under certain circumstances, orienting endogenous attention to different categories can influence the perceptual stages of face and word visual processing.
Neuropsychologia 10/2010; 48(14):4038-45. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: El presente artículo describe algunos paradigmas clásicos para el estudio de la percepción no consciente conjuntamente con investigaciones recientes en el campo de la Neurociencia Cognitiva que hacen uso de técnicas de neuroimagen moderna, como los potenciales evocados de alta densidad y la resonancia magnética funcional, para explorar las características funcionales y bases cerebrales del procesamiento no consciente o no atentivo de la información. Numerosos datos avalan el hecho de que la percepción subliminal es una realidad en el cerebro y no una quimera.Some classic landmark paradigms used to study unconscious perception together with related recent developments in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience are described. High-density Electrophysiological measurements and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging are two neuroimaging technologies extensively used to explore the brain basis and functional markers of unconscious and non-attended information processing. Results with these methodologies support the existence of subliminal perception in the brain.
Estudios de Psicología 05/2007; 28(2):167-176. · 0.28 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The existence of differential brain mechanisms of conscious and unconscious processing is a matter of debate nowadays. The present experiment explores whether conscious and unconscious semantic priming in a lexical decision task at a long prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) correlate with overlapping or different event related potential (ERP) effects. Results show that the N400 effect, which appeared when words were consciously perceived, completely disappeared when primes were masked at a level where the ability of participants to detect the prime was near chance. Instead, a rather different set of ERP effects was found to index unconscious semantic priming. This suggests that the processes at the basis of conscious and unconscious semantic analyses can under some circumstances be rather different. Moreover, our results support the notion that conscious and unconscious processes are at least partially separable in the brain.
Cognitive Brain Research 11/2003; 17(3):719-31. · 3.77 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: El presente artículo revisa los resultados obtenidos recientemente en el campo de la Neurociencia Cognitiva en relación con la actividad consciente en primates superiores. El conjunto de datos obtenido mediante técnicas como la Tomografía por Emisión de Positrones o la Resonancia Magnética Funcional y los registros unicelulares en monos, conjuntamente con el estudio de casos únicos de pacientes neuropsicológicos, puede ser utilizado para apoyar o desmentir aquellos modelos teóricos destinados a explicar la consciencia y para generar nuevas hipótesis en relacion a ésta. Las regiones cerebrales asociadas con la actividad consciente son parcialmente separables de aquéllas relacionadas con procesos inconscientes. Por otro lado, la consciencia se asocia a procesos de integración de información entre áreas de asociación terciarias como las cortezas parietales y prefrontales. Estos resultados concuerdan con aquellos modelos cognitivos que, en oposición a concepciones epifenomenistas, asocian la actividad consciente con procesos cerebrales y funciones cognitivas específicas que son vitales para la economía cognitiva. A review of recent Cognitive Neuroscience research on consciousness in higher primates is presented. Data obtained by means of PET or FMRI and single-cell recordings in monkeys together with single-case studies in neuropsychology are currently being used to either support or refute models devised to explain conscious phenomena. Brain regions linked to conscious activity are partially dissociable from those related to unconscious processes. On the other hand, consciousness is associated to integration processes taking place in high-order association cortices, such as parietal and prefrontal areas. These results are in accord with non-epiphenomenalist cognitive models that link conscious awareness to both specific brain regions and cognitive functions, which are of vital importance to human cognition.
Estudios de Psicología 05/2003; 24(2):147-162. · 0.28 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: We report two experiments that examine the effects of practice on the early facilitation and later inhibition of return (IOR) effects of cueing in detection and color-discrimination tasks. In the first experiment a short and a long SOA were mixed within a block of trials, so that there was temporal uncertainty. In the second experiment SOA was manipulated between subjects, to eliminate temporal uncertainty. Facilitation and IOR effects were obtained in the short and long SOAs respectively, in both detection and discrimination tasks, and they consistently decreased with practice. The cueing effects were more positive (i.e., bigger facilitation and smaller IOR) in the discrimination task than in the detection task. Cueing and practice effects were modulated by temporal uncertainty (Experiment 1 vs. Experiment 2). Our results go some way to resolving some of the contradictory findings in the literature.
Psicológica. 01/2001;
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ABSTRACT: La amplitud perceptual, definida como la zona alrededor del punto de fijación de la que se extrae información funcional para el procesamiento, es mayor a la derecha que a la izquierda de éste, al menos cuando se procesa material verbal. Esta asimetría en la amplitud perceptual ha sido puesta de manifiesto con diferentes paradigmas experimentales que revisamos en este trabajo. Revisamos igualmente las distintas hipótesis que se han propuesto para su explicación, para concluir con algunas implicaciones que este dato pudiera tener para otros estudios que utilizan presentación de material verbal en parafóvea. Perceptual span, i.e. the area around fixation point from which functional processing information is extracted, is bigger to the right than to the left of fixation point, at least when verbal material is used. This asymmetry in perceptual span has been revealed with several experimental paradigms, which are reviewed in this paper. Several explanations of the effect are also reviewed, which leads us to conclude with some implications that this work might have for studies using parafoveal presentation of verbal material.
Estudios de Psicología 05/1999; 20(1):101-110. · 0.28 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: When a stimulus appears in a previously cued location several hundred milliseconds after the cue, the time required to detect
that stimulus is greater than when it appears in an uncued location. This increase in detection time is known as inhibition
of return (IOR). It has been suggested that IOR reflects the action of a general attentional mechanism that prevents attention
from returning to previously explored loci. At the same time, the robustness of IOR has been recently disputed, given several
failures to obtain the effect in tasks requiring discrimination rather than detection. In a series of eight experiments, we
evaluated the differences between detection and discrimination tasks with regard to IOR. We found that IOR was consistently
obtained with both tasks, although the temporal parameters required to observe IOR were different in detection and discrimination
tasks. In our detection task, the effect appeared after a 400-msec delay between cue and target, and was still present after
1,300 msec. In our discrimination task, the effect appeared later and disappeared sooner. The implications of these data for
theoretical accounts of IOR are discussed.
Attention Perception & Psychophysics 04/1997; 59(8):1241-1254. · 2.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: En este artículo se presentan dos experimentos en los que se examinan los efectos de la práctica en la facilitación inicial y la posterior inhibición de retorno (IR) que se produce tras la señalización de un lugar, con tarea de detección y de discriminación de color. En el primer experimento se mezclaron dentro del mismo bloque de ensayos un SOA corto y otro largo, de forma que hubiera incertidumbre temporal. En el segundo experimento se manipuló el SOA entre grupos para eliminar la incertidumbre temporal. Tanto con tarea de detección como de discriminación, se obtuvieron respectivamente en los SOAs corto y largo efectos de facilitación e IR, los cuales se vieron reducidos consistentemente con la práctica. Los efectos de orientación atencional fueron en general más positivos (v.gr., mayor facilitación y menor IR) con tarea de discriminación que con detección. Los efectos de la orientación atencional y la práctica se vieron modulados por la incertidumbre temporal (Experimento 1 vs. Experimento 2). Nuestros resultados contribuyen en cierta medida a la resolución de algunos resultados contradictorios de la literatura experimental sobre los efectos de la práctica en la orientación atencional.
Psicológica: Revista de metodología y psicología experimental, ISSN 0211-2159, Vol. 22, Nº 1, 2001, pags. 1-24.
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ABSTRACT: Some classic landmark paradigms used to study unconscious perception together with related recent developments in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience are described. High-density Electrophysiological measurements and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging are two neuroimaging technologies extensively used to explore the brain basis and functional markers of unconscious and non-attended information processing. Results with these methodologies support the existence of subliminal perception in the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract)
Estudios de Psicologia. 28(2):167-176.
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ABSTRACT: En: Estudios de Psicología Madrid 1999, n. 62 ; p. 101-110 La amplitud perceptual, definida como la zona alrededor del punto de fijación de la que se extrae información funcional para el procesamiento, es mayor a la derecha que a la izquierda de éste, al menos cuando se procesa material verbal. Esta asimetría en la amplitud perceptual ha sido puesta de manifiesto con diferentes paradigmas experimentales que revisamos en este trabajo. Revisamos igualmente las distintas hipótesis que se han propuesto para su explicación, para concluir con algunas implicaciones que este dato pudiera tener para otros estudios que utilizan presentación de material verbal en parafóvea, Bibliografía p. 109-110
http://www.redined.mec.es/oai/indexg.php?registro=005200030024.
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ABSTRACT: En: Estudios de psicología Madrid 2003, v. 24, n. 2 ; p. 147-162 El presente artículo revisa los resultados obtenidos recientemente en el campo de la Neurociencia Cognitiva en relación con la actividad consciente en primates superiores. El conjunto de datos obtenido mediante técnicas como la Tomografía por Emisión de Positrones o la Resonancia Magnética Funcional y los registros unicelulares en monos, conjuntamente con el estudio de casos únicos de pacientes neuropsicológicos, puede ser utilizado para apoyar o desmentir aquellos modelos teóricos destinados a explicar la consciencia y para generar nuevas hipótesis en relación a ésta. Las regiones cerebrales asociadas con la actividad consciente son parcialmente separables de aquellas relacionadas con procesos inconscientes. Por otro lado, la consciencia se asocia a procesos de integración de información entre áreas de asociación terciarias como las cortezas parietales y prefrontales. Estos estudios concuerdan con aquellos modelos cognitivos que, en oposición a concepciones epifenomenistas, asocian la actividad consciente con procesos cerebrales y funciones cognitivas específicas que son vitales para la economía cognitiva, bibliografía p. 159-162
http://www.redined.mec.es/oai/indexg.php?registro=005200330372.
