Pathways for Rapid Visual Processing: Subcortical Contributions to Emotion, Threat, Biological Relevance and Motivated Behavior

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Background

From birth, the human visual system is the predominant sensory system that allows us to begin to understand and interact with the outside world. In adulthood, vision remains central for driving a range of cognitive and social skills. Whether it be reading a book or understanding the social cues of a conversation partner, these skills are first of all a visual task. The last 40 years of vision science have provided incredibly detailed knowledge, mainly focussing on the main geniculo-striate pathway. This pathway provides the substantial visual inputs to cortex that drives our ability to consciously perceive and act on the world. However, the visual system also consists of myriad shortcuts and alternative routes between retina and higher order cortical regions beyond the primary visual cortex. These subcortical shortcuts are critical for rapid alerting of attention, eye-movements, and non-conscious (or pre-conscious) emotional responses.

The subcortical visual system drives infant vision, and is also the primary sensory system for many evolutionary older animals. Thus from the point of view of survival, this subcortical system is critical. The adult human system, which relies on\ detailed conscious, cortically-driven perception, has evolved on top of the older vertebrate subcortical system through the superior colliculus that is not tied to language-based consciousness. This Research Topic will explore the functional role of the superior colliculus-pulvinar pathway along with other subcortical structures involved in this system. How and where do non-verbal associations of positive or negative valence get attached to visual stimuli?
Although brain structures associated with the ‘social brain’ such as the amygdala are activated through the traditional slower cortical visual pathways, the benefits of a system that can activate autonomic and emotional processes rapidly, and even prior to conscious deliberation are immense. A key pathway that has been highlighted previously is the direct route through the superior colliculus to the amygdala via the pulvinar. This pathway is strongly implicated in fast, automatic, and even non-conscious emotional processing of faces and potential threat, in particular.
What are the implications of a disturbance in this pathway throughout development? This Research Topic seeks to further understand the contribution of subcortical vision in driving fast processing – in infants and in adults – with a particular focus on emotional processing in healthy populations as well as in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.

This Research Topic will focus on the contribution of fast subcortical pathways to vision, and in particular to facilitating automatic emotional evaluations and responses. The scope of this collection will include a discussion of the functional role of processing through these direct pathways. For example, whilst much emphasis has been on face processing, the amygdala is not simply a threat-detector, and is better described as a biological relevance-detector. What other types of information are preferentially carried through these pathways? The scope is not limited to the collicular-pulvinar-amygdala pathway; a number of other subcortical structures contribute to aspects of emotional processing and have received less attention, including (but not limited to) the periaqueductal grey, locus coeruleus which appear important for physiological and autonomic responses to fear and panic.

Neurodevelopmental or psychiatric disorders are of particular interest. For example, Autism Spectrum Disorder is associated with difficulties in social cognition and face processing that are linked to amygdala dysfunction. Less considered, is whether a deficit in the superior colliculus or the direct pathway to the amygdala might be impaired. How anxiety influences activation and reliance on these phylogenetically older pathways is also of relevance. Though the scope of this Research Topic may include a focus on clinical disorders, the broad aim is to discuss how fast subcortical visual processing contributes to a broader ability to rapidly integrate the dynamic and complex social world.

Keywords: Visual processing, subcortical, emotion, automatic processing, amygdala

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