The neural process of perception and evaluation for environmental hazards: evidence from event-related potentials.

Perception and evaluation of environmental hazards are vital for human beings to avoid potential hazard. This study used event-related potentials to explore the neural temporal features in the human brain during the processing of environmental hazard presented by picture stimuli, and we found two stages involved in processing pictures with environmental hazard: the relatively early automatic hazard perception stage indicated by P200 and the later hazard evaluation stage indicated by late positive potential. It provided certain evidence for the hazard perception two-stage model. The results indicated consistency between neural processing toward word and picture stimuli in the hazard evaluation tasks.