PhD Hadas Okon-Singer | Factors modulating emotional reactions: Attention, personality and neural architecture

Models of emotional processing highlight the interactions between emotional and attentional systems. These views are based on evidence that emotional information is prioritized and impact attentional functions, as well as evidence that attention and control mechanisms mediate reactions to aversive stimuli. Most of the views today suggest a balance between bottom-up emotions, triggered automatically by limbic regions, and top-down regulation by cortical regions. However, our findings suggest the existence of bottom up (not only top-down) control. In this talk, I will present evidence that attention mechanisms and anxiety-related personality traits and tendencies modulate behavioral, neural and autonomic (basic motor-related blood pressure) reactions to highly-negative material. This evidence suggests that individual characteristics shape the connectivity within a neural network that is involved in the reactions to emotional stimuli; activation in this neural network is further modulated by attention. These findings have possible clinical implications for individuals that show dysfunctional reactions to emotional stimuli.