Department of Psychology, Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Emotion. 2021 Feb;21(1):148-158. doi: 10.1037/emo0000680. Epub 2019 Oct 7.
In this study, we examined how emotional arousal interacts with hunger states and the processing of food stimuli. In general, arousal enhances the processing of high-priority information at the expense of lower priority information (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Because food has been a biologically relevant stimulus in primates throughout evolution, detecting it in the environment and remembering its location has high priority. In our study, inducing arousal enhanced attention to subsequent food stimuli. In addition, we manipulated whether participants were hungry or sated to examine how hunger states would influence emotional processing. Previous research reveals that being hungry is associated with increases in norepinephrine, a key neurotransmitter involved in the arousal response. We found that, when sated, participants showed greater pupil dilation to emotional than neutral stimuli. In contrast, when hungry, pupil dilation responses were as strong to neutral as to emotional stimuli. Thus, when hungry, participants were less effective at differentiating the intensity of arousal responses to emotional versus neutral stimuli because of high arousal responses to neutral stimuli. Memory for food stimuli was enhanced compared with memory for nonfood stimuli for all participants but especially for hungry participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
在这项研究中，我们研究了情绪唤醒如何与饥饿状态以及食物刺激的加工相互作用。一般来说，唤醒会增强对高优先级信息的处理，而牺牲低优先级信息（Mather & Sutherland，2011）。因为在整个进化过程中，食物对于灵长类动物来说一直是一种具有生物学意义的刺激，所以在环境中检测到它并记住它的位置具有很高的优先级。在我们的研究中，诱发唤醒会增强对后续食物刺激的注意力。此外，我们还操纵了参与者是饥饿还是饱腹，以研究饥饿状态如何影响情绪处理。先前的研究表明，饥饿会导致去甲肾上腺素增加，去甲肾上腺素是一种参与唤醒反应的关键神经递质。我们发现，当参与者饱腹时，他们对情绪刺激的瞳孔扩张比中性刺激更大。相比之下，当饥饿时，瞳孔扩张对中性刺激和情绪刺激一样强烈。因此，由于对中性刺激的唤醒反应较高，饥饿的参与者在区分情绪刺激和中性刺激的唤醒反应强度方面的效果较差。与非食物刺激相比，所有参与者对食物刺激的记忆增强，但饥饿的参与者尤其如此。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
