ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2026
Distractor processing of emotional faces: behavioral and women-only fMRI findings on the perceptual load-dilution debate.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: The perceptual load-dilution debate asks whether reduced distractor interference under demanding visual conditions reflects limited perceptual capacity or competition from additional neutral items. Because this debate has relied largely on neutral stimuli, it remains unclear whether the same mechanisms govern emotionally meaningful distraction. We examined this question using an all-faces visual search paradigm that separated cue-based attentional demand from display composition while minimizing target-distractor category confounds. Methods: In Experiment 1, 60 participants completed a face-discrimination task manipulating cue size, face size, target emotion (happy, angry), and distractor type (neutral, congruent, incongruent). In Experiment 2, 30 healthy right-handed women completed an fMRI-adapted version of the task during 3T scanning. Results: Behaviorally, distractor interference increased with cue size selectively for happy targets, yielding a reversed load effect, whereas face size did not alter interference. During scanning, congruency scores were not significantly modulated by cue size, face size, or target emotion. Neurally, incongruent trials increased activity across bilateral amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and frontal eye fields, and additionally engaged visual, parietal, subcortical, and motor regions. Cue size and face size showed different neural profiles, while emotion- and congruency-related responses depended on the broader task configuration. Left dorsolateral prefrontal congruency effects varied jointly with cue size and target emotion, whereas emotion-related responses in left anterior cingulate cortex and right amygdala depended on the cue-by-face configuration. Discussion: These findings do not support a dilution-specific amygdala mechanism. Instead, they indicate that cue-based attentional demand and display composition make different but interacting contributions to emotional distractor processing, and that neural sensitivity to distraction can remain evident when its behavioral expression is weak.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.