Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Emotional information gains rapid and often preferential access to our brain's processing resources. This ""emotional attention"" enables us to quickly detect and respond to dangerous or pleasant aspects of our environment. However, dwelling on emotional information can be disruptive or even dangerous. Some situations require calm precision even while we are being bombarded with emotionally salient cues (e.g., emergency response or trauma surgery). Fortunately, the human brain has also evolved systems that help reprioritize information processing, minimize distraction, and bias our attention towards the most behaviourally relevant information. My research aims to determine how the human brain performs this mental balancing act. Although aspects of attention have been well-researched, we have only begun to investigate how the brain prioritizes and controls the effects of competing emotional information on behaviour. In humans, this work has focussed on competition between different visual cues. There is still much to be learned in the visual domain, and we know even less about these processes in the auditory system. Recent findings suggest that a degree of specialization exists in the brain for processing distinct classes of emotional information (e.g., positive versus disgusting stimuli). Yet we know little about how conflicting classes of emotional information are prioritized or represented in the human brain within and between sensory systems. My research uses behavioural and brain imaging techniques to measure the impact of emotionally salient information on brain activity and behaviour. These techniques are used with healthy individuals and people with acquired brain lesions following surgical procedures or injuries. These methods provide fundamental knowledge about the brain regions involved in and necessary for representing and controlling emotional information. Because this research examines the conditions under which competing streams of relevant and irrelevant emotional information capture our attention and influence our judgement, it will have applications for the selection and training of surgeons, emergency response personnel, air-traffic controllers, pilots, and defence personnel.