Previous literature demonstrated that long-term memory representations guide spatial attention during visual search in real-world pictures. However, it is currently unknown whether memory-guided visual search is affected by the emotional content of the picture. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants were asked to encode the position of high-contrast targets embedded in emotional (negative or positive) or neutral pictures. At retrieval, they performed a visual search for targets presented at the same location as during encoding, but at a much lower contrast. Behaviorally, participants detected more accurately targets presented in negative pictures compared to those in positive or neutral pictures. They were also faster in detecting targets presented at encoding in emotional (negative or positive) pictures than in neutral pictures, or targets not presented during encoding (i.e., memory-guided attention effect). At the neural level, we found increased activation in a large circuit of regions involving the dorsal and ventral frontoparietal cortex, insular and parahippocampal cortex, selectively during the detection of targets presented in negative pictures during encoding. We propose that these regions might form an integrated neural circuit recruited to select and process previously encoded target locations (i.e., memory-guided attention sustained by the frontoparietal cortex) embedded in emotional contexts (i.e., emotional contexts recollection supported by the parahippocampal cortex and emotional monitoring supported by the insular cortex). Ultimately, these findings reveal that negative emotions can enhance memory-guided visual search performance by increasing neural activity in a large-scale brain circuit, contributing to disentangle the complex relationship between emotion, attention, and memory.

中文翻译：

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负面情绪通过增加额顶叶、岛叶和海马旁皮质活动来增强视觉搜索任务中记忆引导的注意力

先前的文献表明，长期记忆表征在现实世界图片的视觉搜索过程中引导空间注意力。然而，目前尚不清楚记忆引导的视觉搜索是否受到图片情感内容的影响。在功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）过程中，参与者被要求对嵌入情感（消极或积极）或中性图片中的高对比度目标的位置进行编码。在检索时，他们对与编码期间位于同一位置但对比度低得多的目标进行视觉搜索。在行为上，与正面或中性图片中的目标相比，参与者更准确地检测到负面图片中呈现的目标。他们在检测情感（消极或积极）图片编码时呈现的目标也比中性图片或编码期间未呈现的目标更快（即记忆引导的注意力效应）。在神经水平上，我们发现在编码过程中检测负片中呈现的目标时，涉及背侧和腹侧额顶叶皮层、岛叶和海马旁皮层的大量区域的激活增加。我们提出，这些区域可能形成一个集成的神经回路，被招募来选择和处理先前编码的目标位置（即，由额顶叶皮层维持的记忆引导注意力）嵌入情感环境（即，由海马旁皮层和情绪支持的情感环境回忆）。由岛叶皮质支持的监测）。最终，这些发现表明，负面情绪可以通过增加大规模大脑回路中的神经活动来增强记忆引导的视觉搜索性能，从而有助于理清情绪、注意力和记忆之间的复杂关系。