Rapid and accurate perception of threat information is a critical ability and a prerequisite to survive natural selection for humans.To investigate whether threatening stimuli,especially phylogenetic and ontogenetic t...Rapid and accurate perception of threat information is a critical ability and a prerequisite to survive natural selection for humans.To investigate whether threatening stimuli,especially phylogenetic and ontogenetic threats,are processed automatically,we analyzed the visual mismatch negativity(vMMN,an event-related potential component reflecting automatic processing)elicited by the threats with a cross-modal oddball paradigm,where participants were required to focus on the auditory stimuli and ignore the visual stimuli in each block.In this study,neutral(non-threatening)images served as standard stimuli(80%),and phylogenetic(10%)and ontogenetic(10%)threat stimuli served as deviant stimuli when testing a large sample(N=96)of healthy volunteers.Threat-related visual mismatch negativity(threat-vMMN)was obtained by subtracting the event-related potential(ERP)elicited by standard stimuli from that elicited by deviant stimuli.The results indicated that the vMMN can be elicited by threat information.More importantly,the phylogenetic threat information elicited larger threat-vMMN than ontogenetic threat information.These findings suggest that perception of threat information was automatic,providing an evidential basis for the attentional advantages of survival processing.That is,automatic perception of phylogenetic threats has a particular evolutionary origin.展开更多
文摘Rapid and accurate perception of threat information is a critical ability and a prerequisite to survive natural selection for humans.To investigate whether threatening stimuli,especially phylogenetic and ontogenetic threats,are processed automatically,we analyzed the visual mismatch negativity(vMMN,an event-related potential component reflecting automatic processing)elicited by the threats with a cross-modal oddball paradigm,where participants were required to focus on the auditory stimuli and ignore the visual stimuli in each block.In this study,neutral(non-threatening)images served as standard stimuli(80%),and phylogenetic(10%)and ontogenetic(10%)threat stimuli served as deviant stimuli when testing a large sample(N=96)of healthy volunteers.Threat-related visual mismatch negativity(threat-vMMN)was obtained by subtracting the event-related potential(ERP)elicited by standard stimuli from that elicited by deviant stimuli.The results indicated that the vMMN can be elicited by threat information.More importantly,the phylogenetic threat information elicited larger threat-vMMN than ontogenetic threat information.These findings suggest that perception of threat information was automatic,providing an evidential basis for the attentional advantages of survival processing.That is,automatic perception of phylogenetic threats has a particular evolutionary origin.
