EMOTION AND ATTENTION - STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN

Emotion is conceived here as involving two motivational systems, appet itive and defensive, that are organized in subcortical and deep cortic al circuits that mediate reactions to primary reinforcers in mammals. When activated by cues in the environment, these systems prompt widesp read cortical, autonomic, and somatic responses that subserve adaptive behaviors and direct attention. We present data from a picture percep tion paradigm which indicate that processing affective pictures produc es reliable patterns of psychophysiological response that support a ba sic biphasic view of emotion.