Citation

West GL, Anderson AK, Bedwell JS, Pratt J. Psychol. Sci. 2010; 21(7): 992-999.

Affiliation

1University of Toronto.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797610371966

PMID

20489219

Abstract

Prioritization of affective events may occur via two parallel pathways originating from the retina-a parvocellular (P) pathway projecting to ventral-stream structures responsible for object recognition or a faster and phylogenetically older magnocellular (M) pathway projecting to dorsal-stream structures responsible for localization and action. It has previously been demonstrated that retinal exposure to red diffuse light suppresses M-cell neural activity. We tested whether the fast propagation along the dorsal-action pathway drives an accelerated conduction of fear-based content. Using a visual prior-entry procedure, we assessed accelerated stimulus perception while either suppressing the M pathway with red diffuse light or leaving it unaffected with green diffuse light. We show that the encoding of fearful faces is accelerated, but not when M-channel activity is suppressed, revealing a dissociation that implicates a privileged neural link between emotion and action that begins at the retina.

Language: en