Figure 1.

A schematic of the attentional framework. Within this schematic only two stimuli can be attended to: A and B. A and B are representational competitors stronger representation of A leads to weaker representation of B (and vice versa) due to the depicted inhibitory connections between these representations. In the figure, A is a task relevant stimulus. Thus, goal directed top down attentional control will lead to priming of this representation, increasing its activity and its probability of suppressing the representation of B. In the figure, B is an emotional stimulus. Prior stimulus-reinforcement learning has led to an association between B and an emotional reaction. Thus B leads to activation of amygdala dependent “valence representations” which, because of their reciprocal connection with representational cortex, increases the representational strength of B.