Neuronal interactions in areas of spatial attention reflect avoidance of disgust, but orienting to danger

•Disgust avoidance and orienting to danger were tested with a spatial cueing paradigm.•Behaviorally and neuronally, interactions of emotion by spatial attention were found.•Visual and IPL activity increased for fearfully cued targets, when spatially valid.•Visual and IPL activity increased for disgust cued targets, when spatially invalid.•TPJ indicated an interaction pattern reversed to IPL and visual cortex.

For survival, it is necessary to attend quickly towards dangerous objects, but to turn away from something that is disgusting. We tested whether fear and disgust sounds direct spatial attention differently. Using fMRI, a sound cue (disgust, fear or neutral) was presented to the left or right ear. The cue was followed by a visual target (a small arrow) which was located on the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) side as the cue. Participants were required to decide whether the arrow pointed up- or downwards while ignoring the sound cue. Behaviorally, responses were faster for invalid compared to valid targets when cued by disgust, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for targets after fearful and neutral sound cues. During target presentation, activity in the visual cortex and IPL increased for targets invalidly cued with disgust, but for targets validly cued with fear which indicated a general modulation of activation due to attention. For the TPJ, an interaction in the opposite direction was observed, consistent with its role in detecting targets at unattended positions and in relocating attention. As a whole our results indicate that a disgusting sound directs spatial attention away from its location, in contrast to fearful and neutral sounds.