Binocular rivalry and emotion: Implications for neural correlates of consciousness and emotional biases in conscious perception.
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior November 1, 2019 María Hernández-Lorca, Kristian Sandberg, Dominique Kessel et al.
Conscious perception of emotional images is linked to brain activity in the visual awareness negativity (VAN) time range (130–320 ms after stimulus onset), which is the earliest neural correlate of consciousness and extends beyond simple visual features. An emotional modulation of event-related potentials—termed emotional content awareness modulation (ECAM)—appears at this VAN latency. In binocular rivalry, where neutral and emotional images compete for conscious perception, positive valence is more likely to dominate as the first percept, indicating an emotional bias toward positive content. Negative and positive emotional content modulate conscious perception differently. These findings connect early perceptual brain activity with emotional influences on what we consciously see.