Predicting Subjective Affective Salience from Cortical Responses to Invisible Object Stimuli.

The affective value of a stimulus substantially influences its potency to gain access to awareness. Here, we sought to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying such affective salience in a combined behavioral and fMRI experiment. Healthy individuals with varying degrees of spider phobia were presented with pictures of spiders and flowers suppressed from view by continuous flash suppression.