The impact of attention bias modification training on behavioral and physiological responses.

Attention bias modification training aims to alter attentional deployment to symptom-relevant emotionally salient stimuli. Such training has therapeutic applications in the management of disorders including anxiety, depression, addiction and chronic pain. In emotional reactions, attentional biases interact with autonomically-mediated changes in bodily arousal putatively underpinning affective feeling states. Here we examined the impact of attention bias modification training on behavioral and autonomic reactivity. Fifty-eight participants were divided into two groups. A training group (TR) received attention bias modification training to enhance attention to pleasant visual information, while a control group (CT) performed a procedure that did not modify attentional bias. After training, participants performed an evaluation task in which pairs of emotional and neutral images (unpleasant-neutral, pleasant-neutral, neutral-neutral) were presented, while behavioral (eye movements) and autonomic (skin conductance; heart rate) responses were recorded. At the behavioral level, trained participants were faster to orientate attention to pleasant images, and slower to orientate to unpleasant images. At the autonomic level, trained participants showed attenuated skin conductance responses to unpleasant images, while stronger skin conductance responses were generally associated with higher anxiety. These data argue for the use of attentional training to address both the attentional and the physiological sides of emotional responses, appropriate for anxious and depressive symptomatology, characterized by atypical attentional deployment and autonomic reactivity.

Ego- and Geo-Centered References: A Functional Neuroimagery Study.

INTRODUCTION: The integration of vestibular, visual, and somatosensory cues allows the perception of space through the orientation of our body and surrounding objects with respect to gravity. The main goal of this study was to identify the cortical networks recruited during the representation of body midline and the representation of verticality. METHODS: Thirty right-handed healthy participants were evaluated using fMRI. Brain networks activated during a subjective straight-ahead (SSA) task were compared to those recruited during a subjective vertical (SV) task. RESULTS: Different patterns of cortical activation were observed, with differential increases in the angular gyrus and left cerebellum posterior lobe during the SSA task, in right rolandic operculum and cerebellum anterior lobe during the SV task. DISCUSSION: The activation of these areas involved in visuo-spatial functions suggests that bodily processes of great complexity are engaged in body representation and vertical perception. Interestingly, the common brain networks involved in SSA and SV tasks were comprised of areas of vestibular projection that receive multisensory information (parieto-occipital areas) and the cerebellum, and reveal a predominance of the right cerebral and cerebellar hemispheres. The outcomes of this first fMRI study designed to unmask common and specific neural mechanisms at work in gravity- or body-referenced tasks pave a new way for the exploration of spatial cognitive impairment in patients with vestibular or cortical disorders.

Representation of Body Orientation in Vestibular-Defective Patients Before and After Unilateral Vestibular Loss.

Introduction: The unilateral vestibular syndrome results in postural, oculomotor, perceptive, and cognitive symptoms. This study was designed to investigate the role of vestibular signals in body orientation representation, which remains poorly considered in vestibular patients. Methods: The subjective straight ahead (SSA) was investigated using a method disentangling translation and rotation components of error. Participants were required to align a rod with their body midline in the horizontal plane. Patients with right vestibular neurotomy (RVN; n =8) or left vestibular neurotomy (LVN; n = 13) or vestibular schwannoma resection were compared with 12 healthy controls. Patients were tested the day before surgery and during the recovery period, 7 days and 2 months after the surgery. Results: Before and after unilateral vestibular neurotomy, i.e., in the chronic phases, patients showed a rightward translation bias of their SSA, without rotation bias, whatever the side of the vestibular loss. However, the data show that the lower the translation error before neurotomy, the greater its increase 2 months after a total unilateral vestibular loss, therefore leading to a rightward translation of similar amplitude in the two groups of patients. In the early phase after surgery, SSA moved toward the operated side both in translation and in rotation, as typically found for biases occurring after unilateral vestibular loss, such as the subjective visual vertical (SVV) bias. Discussion and Conclusion: This study gives the first description of the immediate consequences and of the recovery time course of body orientation representation after a complete unilateral vestibular loss. The overall evolution differed according to the side of the lesion with more extensive changes over time before and after left vestibular loss. It is noteworthy that representational disturbances of self-orientation were highly unusual in the chronic stage after vestibular loss and similar to those reported after hemispheric lesions causing spatial neglect, while classical ipsilesional biases were reported in the acute stage. This study strongly supports the notion that the vestibular system plays a major role in body representation processes and more broadly in spatial cognition. From a clinical point of view, SSA appeared to be a reliable indicator for the presence of a vestibular disorder.

Attention orientation to pleasantness and depressive symptomatology predict autonomic reactivity.

Depression is characterised by attentional bias to emotional information and dysregulated autonomic reactivity. Despite its relevance to understanding depressive mechanisms, the association between attentional bias and autonomic reactivity to emotional information remains poorly characterised. This study compared behavioural and autonomic responses to emotional images in 32 participants in whom subclinical depressive symptomatology was quantified using the Beck Depression Inventory. Pairs of emotional and neutral images (unpleasant-neutral, U-N; pleasant-neutral, P-N; neutral-neutral, N-N) were presented while attentional indices (eye movements) and autonomic activity (skin conductance responses, SCRs; heart rate, HR) were recorded. Results showed that all recorded ocular parameters indicated a preferential orientation and maintenance of attention to emotional images. SCRs were associated with a valence effect on fixation latency: lower fixation latency to pleasant stimuli leads to lower SCRs whereas the opposite was observed for unpleasant stimuli. Finally, stepwise linear regression analysis revealed that latency of fixation to pleasant images and scores of depression predicted SCRs of participants. Thus, our research reveals an association between autonomic reactivity and attentional bias to pleasant information, on the one hand, and depressive symptomatology on the other. Present findings therefore suggest that depressive individuals may benefit from attention training towards pleasant information in association with autonomic biofeedback procedures.

Autonomic reactivity to emotion: A marker of sub-clinical anxiety and depression symptoms?

Anxiety and depression are both characterized by dysregulated autonomic reactivity to emotion. However, most experiments until now have focused on autonomic reactivity to stimuli presented in central vision (CV) even if affective saliency is also observed in peripheral vision (PV). We compared autonomic reactivity to CV and PV emotional stimulation in 58 participants with high anxious (HA) or low anxious (LA) and high depressive (HD) or low depressive (LD) symptomatology, based on STAI-B and BDI scores, respectively. Unpleasant (U), pleasant (P), and neutral (N) pictures from IAPS were presented at three eccentricities (0°: CV; -12 and 12°: PV). Skin conductance (SC), skin temperature, pupillary diameter, and heart rate (HR) were recorded. First, HA participants showed greater pupil dilation to emotional than to neutral stimuli in PV than in CV. Second, in contrast to HD, the valence effect indexed by SC and emotional arousal effect indexed by skin temperature were observed in LD. Third, both anxiety and depression lead to a valence effect indexed by pupillary light reflex and heart rate. These results suggest a hyperreactivity to emotion and hypervigilance to PV in anxiety. Depression is associated with an attenuation of positive effect and a global blunted autonomic reactivity to emotion. Moreover, anxiety mostly modulates the early processes of autonomic reactivity whereas depression mainly affects the later processes. The differential impact of emotional information over the visual field suggests the use of new stimulation strategies in order to attenuate anxious and depressive symptoms.

Signs of spatial neglect in unilateral peripheral vestibulopathy.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In this study, the question of whether egocentric representation of space is impaired in chronic unilateral vestibulopathies was examined. The objective was to test current theories attributing a predominant role to vestibular afferents in spatial cognition and to assess whether representational neglect signs are common in peripheral vestibular loss. METHODS: The subjective straight-ahead (SSA) direction was investigated using a horizontal rod allowing the translation and rotation components of the body midline representation to be dissociated in 21 patients with unilateral vestibular loss (right, 13; left, eight) and in 12 healthy controls. RESULTS: Compared to the controls, the patients with unilateral vestibulopathy showed a translation bias of their SSA, without rotation bias. The translation bias was not lateralized towards the lesioned side as typically found for biases reported after unilateral vestibular loss. Rather, the SSA bias was rightward whatever the side of the vestibular loss. The translation bias correlated with the vestibular loss, as measured by caloric response and vestibulo-ocular reflex gain, but not with the subjective visual vertical or the residual spontaneous nystagmus. CONCLUSION: The present data suggest that the dysfunctions of neural networks involved in egocentred and allocentred representations of space are differentially compensated for in unilateral vestibular defective patients. In particular, they suggest that asymmetrical vestibular inputs to cortical regions lead to representational spatial disturbances as does defective cortical processing of vestibular inputs in spatial neglect after right hemisphere stroke. They also highlight the predominant role of symmetrical and unaltered vestibular inputs in spatial cognition.

[Computerized method for calculating cervical vertebral maturation]. / Méthode informatisée pour le calcul de l'âge osseux vertébral.

For Helm, "the rhythm of facial growth often governs the course of orthodontic treatment". The moment of treatment is an important dimension for our therapy to last a minimum of time with a greatest chance of success and stability. This notion of processing time is a daily requirement in our practices. The radiographs of the wrists will gradually disappear according to the ALARA principle, since we can in a single irradiation, via the profile radiography, have sufficient information to situate the patient on its growth curve. The vertebral stages are good biological indicators of individual skeletal maturity but their interpretation remains difficult. In this work, a computerized method was used to determine the stage of vertebral maturation in a reliable and reproducible manner. In this study, 15 young boys and 15 young girls (total 30 patients) were included, 12,2 years old on average with a standard deviation of 2,6 years. To determine the skeletal age of these patients, the practitioner made an hand-wrist x-ray and, for diagnostic reasons, he also made a profile radiography the same day. The patients who didn't made an hand-wrist x-ray were excluded. The vertebral computerized method seems to be a reliable method to be used in orthodontic practices. Other studies would allow to use this method for average ages, gender-appropriate.

Depression restricts visual capture and promotes the perception of negative information.

Emotional deficits in major depressive disorder lead to changes in the distribution of attention in the visual field. We investigate the impact of unpleasant and neutral pictures, presented in central (0°) and peripheral vision (12°; 24°), in 15 depression patients (DP) and 15 matched healthy controls (HC). Heart rate, skin conductance responses (SCRs) and electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded. A spatiotemporal principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to the EEG, and ANCOVAs controlling for participants' state- and trait-anxiety and patients' medication were performed to assess the effects of visual eccentricity and emotion. Unlike HC, DP showed for CV stimulation 1/ greater sensitivity with a response bias toward unpleasant pictures, 2/ larger SCRs, especially to unpleasant pictures, and 3/ deeper cardiac deceleration. Furthermore, eccentricity and emotion modulated cerebral components. Finally, results bring a new vista on visual capture of negative information and support methods to enlarge the attentional span of depressed patients.

The influence of facial expression at perceptual threshold on electrodermal activity and social comfort distance.

Interpersonal distance, an essential component of social interaction, is modulated by the emotion conveyed by others and associated physiological response. However, in modern societies with overcrowded and hyperstimulating environments, we can only surreptitiously glimpse the faces of others in order to quickly make behavioral adjustments. How this impacts social interactions is not yet well understood. In the present study, we investigated this issue by testing whether facial expressions that are difficult to identify modify the physiological response (Electrodermal Activity, EDA) and subsequent judgment of interpersonal comfort distance. We recorded participants' EDA while they provided comfort judgments to interpersonal distances with a Point-Light Walker (PLW). The PLW, with an emotionally neutral gait, moved toward and crossed participants at various distances after the latter were exposed to a negative (anger), positive (happiness) or neutral facial expression presented at the perceptual threshold. Bayesian analyses of the data revealed an increase versus decrease of interpersonal comfort distance with the PLW depending on the negative versus positive emotional valence of the facial expression. They also showed an increase in EDA when the approaching PLW violated interpersonal comfort distance after participants were exposed to an angry facial expression. These effects correlated with the subjective assessment of the arousal of facial expressions. Thus, previous exposure to barely visible facial expressions can alter the representation of social comfort space and the physiological response associated with a violation of interpersonal comfort distances, depending on the valence and arousal of the emotional social stimuli.

Functional Neuroanatomy of Vertical Visual Perception in Humans.

Vertical representation is central to posture control, as well as to spatial perception and navigation. This representation has been studied for a long time in patients with vestibular disorders and more recently in patients with hemispheric damage, in particular in those with right lesions causing spatial or postural deficits. The aim of the study was to determine the brain areas involved in the visual perception of the vertical. Sixteen right-handed healthy participants were evaluated using fMRI while they were judging the verticality of lines or, in a control task, the color of the same lines. The brain bases of the vertical perception proved to involve a bilateral temporo-occipital and parieto-occipital cortical network, with a right dominance tendency, associated with cerebellar and brainstem areas. Consistent with the outcomes of neuroanatomical studies in stroke patients, The data of this original fMRI study in healthy subjects provides new insights into brain networks associated with vertical perception which is typically impaired in both vestibular and spatial neglect patients. Interestingly, these networks include not only brain areas associated with postural control but also areas implied in body representation.

Facial thermal variations: A new marker of emotional arousal.

Functional infrared thermal imaging (fITI) is considered a promising method to measure emotional autonomic responses through facial cutaneous thermal variations. However, the facial thermal response to emotions still needs to be investigated within the framework of the dimensional approach to emotions. The main aim of this study was to assess how the facial thermal variations index the emotional arousal and valence dimensions of visual stimuli. Twenty-four participants were presented with three groups of standardized emotional pictures (unpleasant, neutral and pleasant) from the International Affective Picture System. Facial temperature was recorded at the nose tip, an important region of interest for facial thermal variations, and compared to electrodermal responses, a robust index of emotional arousal. Both types of responses were also compared to subjective ratings of pictures. An emotional arousal effect was found on the amplitude and latency of thermal responses and on the amplitude and frequency of electrodermal responses. The participants showed greater thermal and dermal responses to emotional than to neutral pictures with no difference between pleasant and unpleasant ones. Thermal responses correlated and the dermal ones tended to correlate with subjective ratings. Finally, in the emotional conditions compared to the neutral one, the frequency of simultaneous thermal and dermal responses increased while both thermal or dermal isolated responses decreased. Overall, this study brings convergent arguments to consider fITI as a promising method reflecting the arousal dimension of emotional stimulation and, consequently, as a credible alternative to the classical recording of electrodermal activity. The present research provides an original way to unveil autonomic implication in emotional processes and opens new perspectives to measure them in touchless conditions.

Autonomic Reactivity to Arousing Stimuli with Social and Non-social Relevance in Alexithymia.

Emotional difficulties in alexithymia and their social consequences have been linked to alterations in autonomic nervous system. However, most of previous studies did not take into account the distinction between the affective and the cognitive dimensions of the alexithymia, leading to inconsistent results. Aim: In this study, we compared the effects of both dimensions of alexithymia on the autonomic arousal to emotional and social visual stimulations. Methods: Skin conductance responses (SCRs) to items of the International Affective Pictures System characterized by emotional (unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant), social (with humans) or non-social (without humans) content were recorded in non-alexithymic (NA), affective (AA) and cognitive alexithymic (CA) participants, selected on the basis of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire. All participants responded to questionnaires of empathy, social phobia, depression, and anxiety before the experiment and evaluated the arousal of the pictures after it. Results: Cognitive alexithymic group showed lower amplitudes of SCRs to pictures with social than without social relevance whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the NA group. Arousal emotional effects of the pictures on SCRs did not differ among groups. In addition, CA participants showed lower scores than NA in the Personal Taking sub-scale of the empathy questionnaire, while AA showed lower scores than NA in the fantasy sub-scale. The CA group showed higher social phobia, depression and anxiety scores, than the other two groups. Conclusion: This work has two original outcomes: first, affective alexithymics expressed lower empathic affective scores than other groups; second, alexithymia modulated the impact of the social relevance of the stimuli on the autonomic reactivity, this impact vanishing in affective alexithymics and reversing in cognitive alexithymics. Thus, though the groups could not be distinguished on the basis of emotional effect on SCRs, they clearly differed when the empathic characteristics and the autonomic impact of social relevance were considered. Finally, the described autonomic signature to social relevant information could contribute to elucidate the difficulty of alexithymics to deal with emotions during social transactions.

Diurnal Emotional States Impact the Sleep Course.

BACKGROUND: Diurnal emotional experiences seem to affect several characteristics of sleep architecture. However, this influence remains unclear, especially for positive emotions. In addition, electrodermal activity (EDA), a sympathetic robust indicator of emotional arousal, differs depending on the sleep stage. The present research has a double aim: to identify the specific effects of pre-sleep emotional states on the architecture of the subsequent sleep period; to relate such states to the sympathetic activation during the same sleep period. METHODS: Twelve healthy volunteers (20.1 ± 1.0 yo.) participated in the experiment and each one slept 9 nights at the laboratory, divided into 3 sessions, one per week. Each session was organized over three nights. A reference night, allowing baseline pre-sleep and sleep recordings, preceded an experimental night before which participants watched a negative, neutral, or positive movie. The third and last night was devoted to analyzing the potential recovery or persistence of emotional effects induced before the experimental night. Standard polysomnography and EDA were recorded during all the nights. RESULTS: Firstly, we found that experimental pre-sleep emotional induction increased the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep rate following both negative and positive movies. While this increase was spread over the whole night for positive induction, it was limited to the second half of the sleep period for negative induction. Secondly, the valence of the pre-sleep movie also impacted the sympathetic activation during Non-REM stage 3 sleep, which increased after negative induction and decreased after positive induction. CONCLUSION: Pre-sleep controlled emotional states impacted the subsequent REM sleep rate and modulated the sympathetic activity during the sleep period. The outcomes of this study offer interesting perspectives related to the effect of diurnal emotional influences on sleep regulation and open new avenues for potential practices designed to alleviate sleep disturbances.

[Craniomandibular relations and anti-gravity posture: stabilometric study disclusion wedges]. / Relations cranio-mandibulaires et posture anti-gravitaire : étude stabilométrique de cales de désocclusion.

Cephalometric parameters are thought to influence static posture. The present work evaluates the relationships between skeletal class or facial divergency, on one hand, and body posture, on the other hand. ANB and FMA angles were measured from profile cephalograms in twenty healthy adults. From each, stabilograms were recorded, with eyes open or shut, and with or without disclusion splints. Without splints, ANB and FMA proved to correlate with the accuracy of postural control. Adding splints changes the average position of the center of pressure exerted on the ground by the body, the anterior-posterior axis, and this effect is consistent with that of the typology. It also alters the displacement of the center of pressure on the same axis. These effects depend on whether the eyes are open or closed. The data reinforces the notion of the impact of cephalometric parameters and their mechanical changes on the static posture. They invite us to take greater account of postural impact of splints used in orthodontic practice.

An anatomical and psychophysical comparison of subjective verticals in patients with right brain damage.

INTRODUCTION: Brain hemisphere lesions often cause a contralesional tilt of the subjective vertical (SV) a phenomenon related to spatial neglect and postural disorders. Depending on the method employed, different perceptual systems come into play when this gravitational vertical is assessed. Here, we compared the anatomical and psychophysical characteristics of modality-dependent SV biases in patients with right hemisphere stroke. METHODS: The SV was measured with visual, haptic and visual-haptic modalities (SV, SVV, SVHV) in 46 patients with a relatively recent stroke. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (performed with NPM(®)) was used to highlight brain areas in which lesions best explained the severity of task biases (p < .05). RESULTS: Lesions explaining the SVV tilt (TSVV) were centered on the posterior part of the middle temporal gyrus, those explaining the TSHV were more limited and anterior, without convergence with the former. Lesions explaining the TSVHV were centered on the superior temporal gyrus and more anterior those explaining the TSVV, with convergence with lesions explaining both the TSVV and the TSHV. Patients showed counterclockwise deviations in the SVs. Constant and variable errors were greater for the SHV than for the SVV and for the SVHV. The TSVV and TVHV were closely related to the presence of left spatial neglect and hemianopia. CONCLUSIONS: Errors in the SVV and (at a lesser degree) SVHV were preferentially related to lesions in visual associative cortex. The SVV and especially the SVHV provide valuable estimates of patient difficulties, in view of the lower associated variable errors (i.e., greater precision) and closer relationships with clinical disorders.

State anxiety modulates the impact of peripherally presented affective stimuli on foveal processing.

BACKGROUND: The priority processing of peripherally presented affective stimuli was recently shown in healthy individuals to divert attentional resources dedicated to foveal processing. Here we investigated the influence of sub-clinical levels of anxiety and depression on this bias. METHODS: Eighty-four participants were submitted to psychological tests that evaluate anxiety and depression levels. Then, they had to make speeded responses to the direction of left- or right-oriented arrows that were presented foveally at fixation. Each arrow was preceded by a peripherally presented pair of pictures, one neutral and one emotional, unpleasant or pleasant. Thus, the direction of the foveal arrow was either congruent or not with the peripheral location of the previously presented emotional picture. Data analysis focused on the differences of reaction times between congruent and incongruent conditions, which assess the spatial response bias in the task. RESULTS: A main effect of state-anxiety was observed suggesting that the higher the level of state-anxiety, the greater the congruence effect. LIMITATIONS: Since the obtained result relates to subclinical anxiety levels, its generalization to anxiety disorders remains tentative. CONCLUSIONS: State-anxiety appears to modulate the propensity to be influenced by emotionally salient information occurring in peripheral vision, independently of its relevance to the ongoing behavior. The long-term persistence of a high level of alertness for emotional cues in visual periphery could contribute to the causation and the maintenance of anxiety disorders.

Mislocalization of tactile stimuli applied to the trunk in spatial neglect.

INTRODUCTION: In patients with spatial neglect, body perception and representation are impaired - especially the projection of the anterior body midline in anterior space (the subjective "straight ahead"). However, data on more lateral body parts and the posterior body surface are scarce. We explored deviations of the perception of different body points located to the left or right of the midline and on the anterior and posterior body surfaces, and their lesion correlates in right hemisphere stroke patients. METHODS: Nine patients with neglect (diagnosed with paper and pencil and behavioural tests) were compared with six non-neglect patients and 13 healthy controls. The subjects had to use a mannequin to designate the body location that had been stimulated by a blunt pencil tip. Four horizontally arranged series of locations were traced on the anterior and posterior body surfaces at shoulder and navel levels. Each horizontal series comprised five equidistant test points, from left to right and corresponded to eleven labelled points on the mannequin. Patient errors were confronted to their anatomic lesions (MRI). RESULTS: We found a significant (p ≤ .05) rightward deviation of the left-side points and midpoint and a significant leftward deviation of the right-most point in neglect patients. Non-neglect patients and control subjects designated all the test points accurately. The body side (anterior or posterior) and the line (shoulder or navel) did not influence performance. Controls showed a definite reduction in variability for the midline points, which disappeared in neglect patients who showed a severe global increase of this variability. Errors depended on lesions centred on the intraparietal sulcus. CONCLUSIONS: These observations were compatible with a complex bias in body perception-representation extending to various lateral body points, with a left to right gradient. The right parietal cortex likely participates in processing such information.

Neuroanatomy of space, body, and posture perception in patients with right hemisphere stroke.

OBJECTIVE: To specify the neuroanatomical correlates of biases in the representations of the gravitational vertical (subjective vertical [SV]) and body axis (subjective straight ahead [SSA]), as well as postural difficulties, in patients with hemispheric stroke. METHODS: The analysis focused on right hemisphere lesions in 21 neglect patients and 21 non-neglect patients (using MRIcro software) and related performance in 2 experimental tasks (SV and SSA) and a clinical balance assessment. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping was used to highlight brain areas in which lesions best explained the severity of task biases (p < 0.01). RESULTS: The bias in the representation of body orientation was found to be strongly related to lesions of the anterior parietal cortex and the middle part of the superior temporal gyrus. The SV errors were associated with more widespread lesions of the posterior parietal and temporal cortices. Imbalance was preferentially associated with lesions of the posterior insula and the adjacent temporoparietal cortex. CONCLUSION: This study evidenced a cortical dissociation for body-centered and gravitational representations biases, which may reflect the differential involvement of these brain regions in spatial information processing. The lesions involved in representation biases (especially of the SV) and postural difficulties overlapped to some extent in the temporoparietal, superior temporal, and posterior insular regions of the cortex.

"Emotions guide us": behavioral and MEG correlates.

Affectively salient stimuli are capable of capturing attentional resources which allow the brain to change the current course of action in order to respond to potentially advantageous or threatening stimuli. Here, we investigated the behavioral and cerebral impact of peripherally presented affective stimuli on the subsequent processing of foveal information. To this end, we recorded whole-head magnetoencephalograms from 12 participants while they made speeded responses to the direction of left- or right-oriented arrows that were presented foveally at fixation. Each arrow was preceded by a peripherally presented pair of pictures, one emotional (unpleasant or pleasant), and one neutral. Paired pictures were presented at 12° of eccentricity to the left and right of a central fixation cross. We observed that the participants responded more quickly when the orientation of the arrow was congruent with the location of the previously presented emotional scene. Results show that non-predictive emotional information in peripheral vision interferes with subsequent responses to foveally presented targets. Importantly, this behavioral effect was correlated with an early (∼135 msec) increase of left fronto-central activity for the emotionally congruent combination, whose cerebral sources were notably located in the left orbitofrontal cortex. We therefore suggest that the prior spatial distribution of emotional salience, like physical salience, grabs attentional resources and modifies the performance in the center of the visual field. Thus, these data shed light on the neurobehavioral correlates of the emotional coding of visual space.

Where is straight ahead to a patient with unilateral vestibular loss?

The vestibular system is classically associated with postural control, oculomotor reflexes and self-motion perception. The patients with vestibular loss are primarily concerned with balance and gait problems including head and trunk tilt and walking trajectory deviation to the lesioned side. These long-lasting postural and locomotor biases are thought to originate from changes in spatial perception of self. Indeed, we show here that vestibular cues are necessary for an accurate representation of body orientation. Patients with right (RVN; n=11) or left vestibular neurotomy (LVN; 9) as a treatment for Menière's disease were compared with 10 healthy controls. The subjective straight ahead (SSA) was investigated using a method disentangling lateral shift and tilt components of error. In the horizontal plane, subjects were required to align a rod with their body midline. In the frontal plane, they were asked to align the rod with the midline of head or trunk. The analysis of SSA clearly showed distinct results according to the side of the lesion. The LVN patients had a contralesional lateral shift of SSA. In addition, they showed an ipsilesional tilt, more severe for the head than for the trunk. By contrast, in RVN patients, the representation of the body midline was fairly accurate in both the horizontal and frontal planes and did not differ from that of control subjects. The present study shows deviations in body orientation representation after unilateral vestibular loss. Deviations are observed in the horizontal as well as in the frontal planes. Interestingly, only patients with left vestibular loss were concerned with these changes in perception of self-orientation in space. These data support the hypothesis of an asymmetric vestibular function in healthy subjects and confirm the similarity of functional disorders in patients with vestibular deficits or spatial neglect. For the first time, this similarity is found at the level of body representation.