Emotion modulates allocentric but not egocentric stimulus localization: implications for dual visual systems perspectives

Considerable evidence suggests that emotional cues influence processing prioritization and neural representations of stimuli. Specifically, within the visual domain, emotion is known to impact ventral stream processes and ventral stream-mediated behaviours; it remains unclear, however, the extent to which emotion impacts dorsal stream processes. In the present study, participants localized a visual target stimulus embedded within a background array utilizing allocentric localization (requiring an object-centred representation of visual space to perform an action) and egocentric localization (requiring purely target-directed actions), which are thought to differentially rely on the ventral versus dorsal visual stream, respectively. Simultaneously, a task-irrelevant negative, positive or neutral sound was presented to produce an emotional context. In line with predictions, we found that during allocentric localization, response accuracy was enhanced in the context of negative compared to either neutral or positive sounds. In contrast, no significant effects of emotion were identified during egocentric localization. These results raise the possibility that negative emotional auditory contexts enhance ventral stream, but not dorsal stream, processing in the visual domain. Furthermore, this study highlights the complexity of emotion–cognition interactions, indicating how emotion can have a differential impact on almost identical overt behaviours that may be governed by distinct neurocognitive systems.