ArticleeNeuro
Arousal-Biased Competition Explains Reduced Distraction by Reward Cues under Threat.
Article in eNeuro. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Electroencephalography, pupillometry, and behavioral evidence for locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system related tonic hyperactivity in older adults.Neurobiology of aging · 2026Article
- Eye movement evidence for locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system contributions to age differences in attention.Psychology and aging · 2025Article
- Electroencephalography, pupillometry, and behavioral evidence for locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system related tonic hyperactivity in older adults.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Aging impairs reactive attentional control but not proactive distractor inhibition.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2024Article
- Eye movements reveal age differences in how arousal modulates saliency priority but not attention processing speed.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Trichotomy revisited: A monolithic theory of attentional control.Vision research · 2024Article
- From learned value to sustained bias: how reward conditioning changes attentional priority.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Rethinking Distraction.Visual cognition · 2024Article
- Neural correlates of value-driven spatial orienting.Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- (A lack of) effects of acute social stress on attentional bias to threat.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Article
- Cross-modal generalization of value-based attentional priority.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022Article
- Morality in the flesh: on the link between bodily self-consciousness, moral identity and (dis)honest behaviour.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Arousal-driven interactions between reward motivation and categorization of emotional facial expressions.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Value-Biased Competition in the Auditory System of the Brain.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2021Article
- An adaptive view of attentional control.The American psychologist · 2021Review
- The past, present, and future of selection history.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Review
- Bicyclist-evoked arousal and greater attention to bicyclists independently promote safer driving.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2021Article
- How Does Threat Modulate the Motivational Effects of Reward on Attention?Experimental psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Anxiety is an adaptive neural state that promotes rapid responses under heightened vigilance when survival is threatened. Anxiety has consistently been found to potentiate the attentional processing of physically salient stimuli. However, a recent study demonstrated that a threat manipulation reduces attentional capture by reward-associated stimuli, suggesting a more complex relationship between anxiety and the control of attention. The mechanisms by which threat can reduce the distracting quality of stimuli are unknown. In this study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on human subjects, we examined the neural correlates of attention to previously reward-associated stimuli with and without the threat of unpredictable electric shock. We replicate enhanced distractor-evoked activity throughout the value-driven attention network (VDAN) in addition to enhanced stimulus-evoked activity generally under threat. Importantly, these two factors interacted such that the representation of previously reward-associated distractors was particularly pronounced under threat. Our results from neuroimaging fit well with the principle of arousal-biased competition (ABC), although such effects are typically associated with behavioral measures of increased attention to stimuli that already possess elevated attentional priority. The findings of our study suggest that ABC can be leveraged to support more efficient ignoring of reward cues, revealing new insights into the functional significance of ABC as a mechanism of attentional control, and provide a mechanistic explanation of how threat reduces attention to irrelevant reward information.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.