“Good and bad moods literally change the way our visual cortex operates and how we see,” says Adam Anderson, a University of Toronto professor of psychology, based on a study appearing in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, as reported by Science Daily.
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Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how our visual cortex processes sensory information when in good, bad, and neutral moods.
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The study, supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canada Research Chairs program, concluded that “when in a positive mood, our visual cortex takes in more information, while negative moods result in tunnel vision.”
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“Under positive moods, people may process a greater number of objects in their environment, which sounds like a good thing, but it also can result in distraction,” says Taylor Schmitz, a graduate student of Anderson’s and lead author of the study. “Bad moods, on the other hand, may keep us more narrowly focused, preventing us from integrating information outside of our direct attentional focus.”
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