Events & News
Colloquium
| Category | Lecture |
| Date | Friday, October 24, 2008 |
| Time | 12:00 pm |
| Location | GS 906 |
| Details | Cognitive Science Brown Bag |
| Speaker | Kevin LaBar |
| Title | Associate Professor |
| Affiliation | Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University |
Perception, Attention, and Learning in the Face of Fear
Threat cues in the form of facial expressions and noxious stimuli alter the prioritization of information processing that affects a variety of cognitive functions. This seminar will review recent work from our laboratory that examines the neural substrates of fear processing and its effects on other cognitive abilities. First, the role of the amygdala in fear recognition is re-examined using new neuropsychological tests in patients with temporal lobe damage. Next, the interaction of facial expression with eye gaze/body gestures is investigated using ERPs, fMRI and behavioral paradigms to determine the interdependence of multiple social cues in guiding attention during dyadic exchanges. Finally, we show how fear alters the probabilistic learning of cue-outcome associations using a novel variant of the ‘weather prediction’ task. These findings highlight limitations in current conceptualizations regarding the neural processing of threat cues and their impact on cognition.