Alteration of expected hemispheric asymmetries: Valence and arousal effects in neuropsychological models of emotion

The interaction effect of high social support and resilience on functional connectivity using seed-based resting-state assessed by 7-Tesla ultra-high field MRI

Recent resilience research has increasingly emphasized the importance of focusing on investigating the protective factors in mentally healthy populations, complementing the traditional focus on psychopathology. Social support has emerged as a crucial element within the complex interplay of individual and socio-environmental factors that shape resilience. However, the neural underpinnings of the relationship between social support and resilience, particularly in healthy subjects, remain largely unexplored. With advances in neuroimaging techniques, such as ultra-high field MRI at 7T and beyond, researchers can more effectively investigate the neural mechanisms underlying these factors. Thus, our study employed ultra-high field rs-fMRI to explore how social support moderates the relationship between psychological resilience and functional connectivity in a healthy cohort. We hypothesized that enhanced social support would amplify resilience-associated connectivity within neural circuits essential for emotional regulation, cognitive processing, and adaptive problem-solving, signifying a synergistic interaction where strong social networks bolster the neural underpinnings of resilience. (n = 30). Through seed-based functional connectivity analyses and interaction analysis, we aimed to uncover the neural correlates at the interplay of social support and resilience. Our findings indicate that perceived social support significantly (p<0.001) alters functional connectivity in the right and left FP, PCC, and left hippocampus, affirming the pivotal roles of these regions in the brain's resilience network. Moreover, we identified significant moderation effects of social support across various brain regions, each showing unique connectivity patterns. Specifically, the right FP demonstrated a significant interaction effect where high social support levels were linked to increased connectivity with regions involved in socio-cognitive processing, while low social support showed opposite effects. Similar patterns by social support levels were observed in the left FP, with connectivity changes in clusters associated with emotional regulation and cognitive functions. The PCC's connectivity was distinctly influenced by support levels, elucidating its role in emotional and social cognition. Interestingly, the connectivity of the left hippocampus was not significantly impacted by social support levels, indicating a unique pattern within this region. These insights highlight the importance of high social support levels in enhancing the neural foundations of resilience and fostering adaptive neurological responses to environmental challenges.

Age-related intrinsic functional connectivity underlying emotion utilization

Previous studies investigated the age-related positivity effect in terms of emotion perception and management, whereas little is known about whether the positivity effect is shown in emotion utilization (EU). If yes, the EU-related intrinsic functional connectivity and its age-associated alterations remain to be elucidated. In this study, we collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 62 healthy older adults and 72 undergraduates as well as their self-ratings of EU. By using the connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) method, we constructed a predictive model of the positive relationship between EU self-ratings and resting-state functional connectivity. Lesion simulation analyses revealed that the medial-frontal network, default mode network, frontoparietal network, and subcortical regions played key roles in the EU-related CPM. Older subjects showed significantly higher EU self-ratings than undergraduates, which was associated with strengthened connectivity between the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and bilateral frontal poles, and between the left frontal pole and thalamus. A mediation analysis indicated that the age-related EU network mediated the age effect on EU self-ratings. Our findings extend previous research on the age-related "positivity effect" to the EU domain, suggesting that the positivity effect on the self-evaluation of EU is probably associated with emotion knowledge which accumulates with age.

Diminished frontal pole size and functional connectivity in young adults with high suicidality

BACKGROUND

Suicide rates among young people have been increasing in recent years, yet no validated methods are available for identifying those who are at greatest risk for suicide. Abnormalities in the medial prefrontal cortex have been previously observed in suicidal individuals, but confounding factors such as treatment and chronic illness may have contributed to these findings. Thus, in this study we tested whether the size of the medial prefrontal cortex is altered in suicidal young adults who have received no treatment with psychotropic medications.

METHODS

Suicidality was evaluated using the Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R) and surface areas of four regions-of-interest (ROIs) within the medial prefrontal cortex were measured using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a cohort of college students (n = 102). In addition, a secondary seed-based functional connectivity analysis was conducted using resting-state functional MRI data. Areas and functional connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex of young adults with high suicidality (HS; SBQ-R score > 7; n = 20) were compared to those with low suicidality (LS; SBQ-R score = 3, n = 37).

RESULTS

Compared to the LS group, the HS group had a significantly lower surface area of the right frontal pole (p < 0.05, Bonferroni-corrected) and significantly lower functional connectivity of the right frontal pole with the bilateral inferior frontal cortex (p < 0.001, Monte-Carlo corrected).

LIMITATION

These findings require replication in a larger sample and extension in younger (adolescent) populations.

CONCLUSION

Diminished frontal pole surface area and functional connectivity may be linked to elevated levels of suicidality in young people.

EEG emotion recognition based on enhanced SPD matrix and manifold dimensionality reduction

Recently, Riemannian geometry-based pattern recognition has been widely employed to brain computer interface (BCI) researches, providing new idea for emotion recognition based on electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Although the symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrix manifold constructed from the traditional covariance matrix contains large amount of spatial information, these methods do not perform well to classify and recognize emotions, and the high dimensionality problem still unsolved. Therefore, this paper proposes a new strategy for EEG emotion recognition utilizing Riemannian geometry with the aim of achieving better classification performance. The emotional EEG signals of 32 healthy subjects were from an open-source dataset (DEAP). The wavelet packets were first applied to extract the time-frequency features of the EEG signals, and then the features were used to construct the enhanced SPD matrix. A supervised dimensionality reduction algorithm was then designed on the Riemannian manifold to reduce the high dimensionality of the SPD matrices, gather samples of the same labels together, and separate samples of different labels as much as possible. Finally, the samples were mapped to the tangent space, and the K-nearest neighbors (KNN), Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) method were employed for classification. The proposed method achieved an average accuracy of 91.86%, 91.84% on the valence and arousal recognition tasks. Furthermore, we also obtained the superior accuracy of 86.71% on the four-class recognition task, demonstrated the superiority over state-of-the-art emotion recognition methods.

EEG-FCV: An EEG-Based Functional Connectivity Visualization Framework for Cognitive State Evaluation

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based tools for brain functional connectivity (FC) analysis and visualization play an important role in evaluating brain cognitive function. However, existing similar FC analysis tools are not only visualized in 2 dimensions (2D) but also are highly prone to cause visual clutter and unable to dynamically reflect brain connectivity changes over time. Therefore, we design and implement an EEG-based FC visualization framework in this study, named EEG-FCV, for brain cognitive state evaluation. EEG-FCV is composed of three parts: the Data Processing module, Connectivity Analysis module, and Visualization module. Specially, FC is visualized in 3 dimensions (3D) by introducing three existing metrics: Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC), Coherence, and PLV. Furthermore, a novel metric named Comprehensive is proposed to solve the problem of visual clutter. EEG-FCV can also visualize dynamically brain FC changes over time. Experimental results on two available datasets show that EEG-FCV has not only results consistent with existing related studies on brain FC but also can reflect dynamically brain FC changes over time. We believe EEG-FCV could prompt further progress in brain cognitive function evaluation.

Foliage colors improve relaxation and emotional status of university students from different countries

The therapeutic advantages of seeing plants have gained increasing consideration in stressful modern societies, however, evidence-based studies on how physiological and emotional states of individuals from different nationalities change when seeing different foliage colors are limited. The study was conducted to explore the physiological and psychological advantages of foliage colors as visual stimuli. The experiment included 40 men from two nations (age: 21.34 ± 3.50 years) and was carried out using five foliage colors including green, light green, green-yellow, green-red and green-white. Participants were exposed to each color for 2 min, when seeing the foliage colors, eye movements and oxy-Hb concentrations were continuously measured. Subjective evaluations of emotions were performed utilizing a semantic differential questionnaire. A significant decrease in oxy-Hb concentration in the frontal lobe was associated with the viewing of green and green-white plants by the Japanese participants and with viewing light green and green-yellow by the Egyptian participants. Participants spent higher fixation numbers and longer durations on these colors. The findings indicate that viewing of these plant colors was positively associated with physiological relaxation. Furthermore, these colors were associated with more positive feelings, such as calmness, comfort and naturalness. Therefore, the presence of these colors in spaces may have positive impacts on relaxation and emotional status.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Modulates Frontal and Temporal Time-Varying EEG Network in Generalized Anxiety Disorder: A Pilot Study

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a highly prevalent yet poorly understood chronic mental disorder. Previous studies have associated GAD with excessive activation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). This study aimed to investigate the effect of low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (repetitive TMS, rTMS) targeting the right DLPFC on clinical symptoms and TMS-evoked time-varying brain network connectivity in patients with GAD. Eleven patients with GAD received 1 Hz rTMS treatment targeting the right DLPFC for 10 days. The severity of the clinical symptoms was evaluated using the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) and the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) at baseline, right after treatment, and at the one-month follow-up. Co-registration of single-pulse TMS (targeting the right DLPFC) and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) was performed pre- and post-treatment in these patients and 11 healthy controls. Time-varying brain network connectivity was analyzed using the adaptive directed transfer function. The scores of HAMA and HAMD significantly decreased after low-frequency rTMS treatment, and these improvements in ratings remained at the one-month follow-up. Analyses of the time-varying EEG network in the healthy controls showed a continuous weakened connection information outflow in the left frontal and mid-temporal regions. Compared with the healthy controls, the patients with GAD showed weakened connection information outflow in the left frontal pole and the posterior temporal pole at baseline. After 10-day rTMS treatment, the network patterns showed weakened connection information outflow in the left frontal and temporal regions. The time-varying EEG network changes induced by TMS perturbation targeting right DLPFC in patients with GAD were characterized by insufficient information outflow in the left frontal and temporal regions. Low-frequency rTMS targeting the right DLPFC reversed these abnormalities and improved the clinical symptoms of GAD.

Differentiating emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in emotion conflict: an ERP study

Despite recent increased attention to emotion conflict, little is known about whether emotion-label words (e.g., sadness, happiness) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death, birthday) function similarly in emotion conflict (i.e., a conflict between the target and distractor in emotion involvement), because the majority of the previous studies implicitly mixed the two. The present study aimed to compare emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in emotion conflict using a flanker task. Specifically, participants (N = 21) were asked to judge the valence of the target words that were vertically surrounded by the words with same (congruent) or different (incongruent) valence as being negative or positive. The behavioral results suggested that negative emotion-laden words were processed faster and more accurately than negative emotion-label words. ERP data further showed that negative emotion-label words elicited larger N200 than negative emotion-laden words on the left hemisphere, while such a difference was found for positive words on the right hemisphere. Moreover, emotion-laden words elicited smaller N200 in the incongruent condition than in the congruent condition, whereas no such a distinction was observed for emotion-label words. The findings suggest different cognitive and neural correlates of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in emotion conflict.

Evidence for a priming-based asymmetry in color identification

Performance asymmetries in colour discrimination (or detection) between visual fields (VFs) are typically examined using mean or median reaction times and have tended to yield either a left VF advantage for all colours (i.e., lower reaction times) or no difference for any colour, although a right VF advantage has also been reported. We used a novel colour identification task in which participants simply identified the colour of a laterally presented rectangle (i.e., red or blue). A measure of priming effects - but not mean or median reaction times - revealed a VF × colour interaction across a pilot study and two experiments; priming for red versus blue stimuli was greater in the left VF and priming for blue stimuli was greater in the right versus left VF. Two plausible psychological explanations of this interaction are offered, including the potential generation of approach and avoidance motivations and different emotional responses to blue versus red stimuli. Future work will be needed, but the current findings indicate that the left and right hemispheres are differentially primed by different colours - the right hemisphere is primed to a greater extent by red stimuli, and the left hemisphere is primed more by blue stimuli.

Inter and intra-hemispheric structural imaging markers predict depression relapse after electroconvulsive therapy: a multisite study

Relapse of depression following treatment is high. Biomarkers predictive of an individual's relapse risk could provide earlier opportunities for prevention. Since electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) elicits robust and rapidly acting antidepressant effects, but has a >50% relapse rate, ECT presents a valuable model for determining predictors of relapse-risk. Although previous studies have associated ECT-induced changes in brain morphometry with clinical response, longer-term outcomes have not been addressed. Using structural imaging data from 42 ECT-responsive patients obtained prior to and directly following an ECT treatment index series at two independent sites (UCLA: n = 17, age = 45.41±12.34 years; UNM: n = 25; age = 65.00±8.44), here we test relapse prediction within 6-months post-ECT. Random forests were used to predict subsequent relapse using singular and ratios of intra and inter-hemispheric structural imaging measures and clinical variables from pre-, post-, and pre-to-post ECT. Relapse risk was determined as a function of feature variation. Relapse was well-predicted both within site and when cohorts were pooled where top-performing models yielded balanced accuracies of 71-78%. Top predictors included cingulate isthmus asymmetry, pallidal asymmetry, the ratio of the paracentral to precentral cortical thickness and the ratio of lateral occipital to pericalcarine cortical thickness. Pooling cohorts and predicting relapse from post-treatment measures provided the best classification performances. However, classifiers trained on each age-disparate cohort were less informative for prediction in the held-out cohort. Post-treatment structural neuroimaging measures and the ratios of connected regions commonly implicated in depression pathophysiology are informative of relapse risk. Structural imaging measures may have utility for devising more personalized preventative medicine approaches.

Effects of Valence on Hemispheric Specialization for Emotion Word Processing

The use of emotion in language is a key element of human interactions and a rich area for cognitive research. The present study examined reactions to words of five types: positive emotion (e.g., happiness), negative emotion (e.g., hatred), positive emotion-laden (e.g., blessing), negative emotion-laden (e.g., prison), and neutral (e.g., chance). Words and nonwords were intermixed in a lexical decision task using hemifield presentation. Results revealed a general left hemisphere advantage. Overall, reaction times for positive words were faster than for negative or neutral words and this effect varied by hemifield of presentation. These results support a valence hypothesis of specialized processing in the left hemisphere of the brain for positive emotions and the right hemisphere for negative emotions.

How high level of anxiety in Panic Disorder can interfere in working memory? A computer simulation and electrophysiological investigation

Panic disorder (PD) is characterized by repeated and unexpected attacks of intense anxiety, which are not restricted to a determined situation or circumstance. The coherence function has been used to investigate the communication among brain structures through the quantitative EEG (qEEG). The objective of this study is to analyze if there is a difference in frontoparietal gamma coherence (GC) between panic disorder patients (PDP) and healthy controls (HC) during the Visual oddball paradigm; and verify if high levels of anxiety (produced by a computer simulation) affect PDP's working memory. Nine PDP (9 female with average age of 48.8, SD: 11.16) and ten HC (1 male and 9 female with average age of 38.2, SD: 13.69) were enrolled in this study. The subjects performed the visual oddball paradigm simultaneously to the EEG record before and after the presentation of computer simulation (CS). A two-way ANOVA was applied to analyze the factors Group and the Moment for each pair of electrodes separately, and another one to analyze the reaction time variable. We verified a F3-P3 GC increased after the CS movie, demonstrating the left hemisphere participation during the anxiety processing. The greater GC in HC observed in the frontal and parietal areas (P3-Pz, F4-F8 and Fp2-F4) points to the participation of these areas with the expected behavior. The greater GC in PDP for F7-F3 and F4-P4 pairs of electrodes assumes that it produces a prejudicial "noise" during information processing, and can be associated to interference on the communication between frontal and parietal areas. This "noise" during information processing is related to PD symptoms, which should be better known in order to develop effective treatment strategies.

Analysis of functional brain connections for positive-negative emotions using phase locking value

In this study, we investigate the brain networks during positive and negative emotions for different types of stimulus (audio only, video only and audio + video) in [Formula: see text], and [Formula: see text] bands in terms of phase locking value, a nonlinear method to study functional connectivity. Results show notable hemispheric lateralization as phase synchronization values between channels are significant and high in right hemisphere for all emotions. Left frontal electrodes are also found to have control over emotion in terms of functional connectivity. Besides significant inter-hemisphere phase locking values are observed between left and right frontal regions, specifically between left anterior frontal and right mid-frontal, inferior-frontal and anterior frontal regions; and also between left and right mid frontal regions. ANOVA analysis for stimulus types show that stimulus types are not separable for emotions having high valence. PLV values are significantly different only for negative emotions or neutral emotions between audio only/video only and audio only/audio + video stimuli. Finding no significant difference between video only and audio + video stimuli is interesting and might be interpreted as that video content is the most effective part of a stimulus.

Chronic stress impacts the cardiovascular system: animal models and clinical outcomes

Psychological stresses are associated with cardiovascular diseases to the extent that cardiovascular diseases are among the most important group of psychosomatic diseases. The longstanding association between stress and cardiovascular disease exists despite a large ambiguity about the underlying mechanisms. An array of possibilities have been proposed including overactivity of the autonomic nervous system and humoral changes, which then converge on endothelial dysfunction that initiates unwanted cardiovascular consequences. We review some of the features of the two most important stress-activated systems, i.e., the humoral and nervous systems, and focus on alterations in endothelial function that could ensue as a result of these changes. Cardiac and hematologic consequences of stress are also addressed briefly. It is likely that activation of the inflammatory cascade in association with oxidative imbalance represents key pathophysiological components of stress-induced cardiovascular changes. We also review some of the commonly used animal models of stress and discuss the cardiovascular outcomes reported in these models of stress. The unique ability of animals for adaptation under stressful conditions lessens the extrapolation of laboratory findings to conditions of human stress. An animal model of unpredictable chronic stress, which applies various stress modules in a random fashion, might be a useful solution to this predicament. The use of stress markers as indicators of stress intensity is also discussed in various models of animal stress and in clinical studies.

Educational impacts of the social and emotional brain

Advances in neuroscience related to social and emotional development have significant implications for educational practice. The human brain cannot fully dissociate cognitive from emotional events, and therefore educational programming that recognizes the importance of social-emotional development also facilitates academic achievement. The ideal learning environment encourages the development of social-emotional and academic neuronal pathways. Taking advantage of the emerging understanding of the developing brain offers opportunities to facilitate greater academic gains.

False memories to emotional stimuli are not equally affected in right- and left-brain-damaged stroke patients

Previous research has attributed to the right hemisphere (RH) a key role in eliciting false memories to visual emotional stimuli. These results have been explained in terms of two right-hemisphere properties: (i) that emotional stimuli are preferentially processed in the RH and (ii) that visual stimuli are represented more coarsely in the RH. According to this account, false emotional memories are preferentially produced in the RH because emotional stimuli are both more strongly and more diffusely activated during encoding, leaving a memory trace that can be erroneously reactivated by similar but unstudied emotional items at test. If this right-hemisphere hypothesis is correct, then RH damage should result in a reduction in false memories to emotional stimuli relative to left-hemisphere lesions. To investigate this possibility, groups of right-brain-damaged (RBD, N=15), left-brain-damaged (LBD, N=15) and healthy (HC, N=30) participants took part in a recognition memory experiment with emotional (negative and positive) and non-emotional pictures. False memories were operationalized as incorrect responses to unstudied pictures that were similar to studied ones. Both RBD and LBD participants showed similar reductions in false memories for negative pictures relative to controls. For positive pictures, however, false memories were reduced only in RBD patients. The results provide only partial support for the right-hemisphere hypothesis and suggest that inter-hemispheric cooperation models may be necessary to fully account for false emotional memories.

Normas de alerta e valência para 908 palavras da Língua Portuguesa

Normas de valência e alerta para 908 palavras foram coletadas utilizando-se a escala de julgamento SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin). Participaram do estudo 4.359 estudantes universitários oriundos de quatro universidades. Os resultados identificaram palavras em todos os quadrantes do espaço afetivo sugerindo que estas podem ser classificadas nas dimensões emocionais alerta (desde palavras relaxantes até mais alertadoras) e valência (desde palavras desagradáveis até agradáveis). A confiabilidade média das normas de valência (r = 0,97) e alerta (r = 0,94) foram altas e significativas. Os resultados de alerta ou valência não estiveram associados ao sexo, idade e frequência de ocorrência das palavras em materiais escritos, sugerindo que estes fatores podem ser considerados ortogonais.

Lateralized goal framing: how selective presentation impacts message effectiveness

We tested whether framing a message as a gain or loss would alter its effectiveness by using a dichotic listening procedure to selectively present a health related message to the left or right hemisphere. A significant goal framing effect (losses > gains) was found when right, but not left, hemisphere processing was initially enhanced. The results support the position that the contextual processing style of the right hemisphere is especially sensitive to the associative implications of the frame. We discussed the implications of these findings for goal framing research, and the valence hypothesis. We also discussed how these findings converge with prior valence framing research and how they can be of potential use to health care providers.

Emotional prosody rarely affects the spatial distribution of visual attention

Emotional manipulations have been demonstrated to produce leftward shifts in perceptual asymmetries. However, much of this research has used linguistic tasks to assess perceptual asymmetry and there are therefore two interpretations of the leftward shift. It may reflect a leftward shift in the spatial distribution of attention as a consequence of emotional activation of the right hemisphere; alternatively it may reflect emotional facilitation of right hemisphere linguistic processing. The current study used two non-linguistic attention tasks to determine whether emotional prosody influences the spatial distribution of visual attention. In a dual-task paradigm participants listened to semantically neutral sentences in neutral, happy or sad prosodies while completing a target discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a target detection task (Experiments 2 and 3). There was only one condition in one experiment that induced perceptual asymmetries that interacted with emotional prosody, suggesting that task-irrelevant emotional prosody only rarely directs attention. Instead a more likely cause of the leftward perceptual shift for comprehension of emotional speech is facilitation of right hemisphere linguistic processing.

Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of negative and positive words: a divided field study

Research on the lateralisation of brain functions for emotion has yielded different results as a function of whether it is the experience, expression, or perceptual processing of emotion that is examined. Further, for the perception of emotion there appear to be differences between the processing of verbal and nonverbal stimuli. The present research examined the hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence. Participants performed a lexical decision task for words varying in affective valence (but equated in terms of arousal) that were presented briefly to the right or left visual field. Participants were significantly faster at recognising positive words presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere. This pattern did not occur for negative words (and was reversed for high arousal negative words). These results suggest that the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence tends to parallel hemispheric asymmetry in the experience of emotion.

Hemispheric processing of differently valenced and self-relevant attachment words in middle-aged married and separated individuals

The reliance in experimental psychology on testing undergraduate populations with relatively little life experience, and/or ambiguously valenced stimuli with varying degrees of self-relevance, may have contributed to inconsistent findings in the literature on the valence hypothesis. To control for these potential limitations, the current study assessed lateralised lexical decisions for positive and negative attachment words in 40 middle-aged male and female participants. Self-relevance was manipulated in two ways: by testing currently married compared with previously married individuals and by assessing self-relevance ratings individually for each word. Results replicated a left hemisphere advantage for lexical decisions and a processing advantage of emotional over neutral words but did not support the valence hypothesis. Positive attachment words yielded a processing advantage over neutral words in the right hemisphere, while emotional words (irrespective of valence) yielded a processing advantage over neutral words in the left hemisphere. Both self-relevance manipulations were unrelated to lateralised performance. The role of participant sex and age in emotion processing are discussed as potential modulators of the present findings.

Electrocortical effects of acute tryptophan depletion on emotive facial processing in depression-prone individuals

This study assessed the effects of acute tryptophan depletion (ATD), which transiently lowers CNS 5-HT, on electrocortical responses to facial expression processing in individuals with a family history of depression (FH+). Electroencephalograph (EEG)-derived event-related potentials (ERPs) were acquired from 18 FH+ individuals during a facial expression recognition task (neutral and sad, joy and surprise at 50% and 100% intensities). Both early positive (P1 and P2) and the face-specific N170 ERP components were differentially altered by emotional intensity and valence. Increased depression, confusion and total mood disturbance scores, and decreased calmness, were observed with ATD (versus placebo). ATD was also associated with enhanced P1 and P2 amplitudes for sad versus joyful expressions. The N170 was not modulated by treatment, but was affected by emotive valence. Therefore, ATD enhanced ERP-indexed early processing of sad facial expressions, and altered the processing of positive ones, in FH+ individuals.

Are females more responsive to emotional stimuli? A neurophysiological study across arousal and valence dimensions

Men and women seem to process emotions and react to them differently. Yet, few neurophysiological studies have systematically investigated gender differences in emotional processing. Here, we studied gender differences using Event Related Potentials (ERPs) and Skin Conductance Responses (SCR) recorded from participants who passively viewed emotional pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The arousal and valence dimension of the stimuli were manipulated orthogonally. The peak amplitude and peak latency of ERP components and SCR were analyzed separately, and the scalp topographies of significant ERP differences were documented. Females responded with enhanced negative components (N100 and N200), in comparison to males, especially to the unpleasant visual stimuli, whereas both genders responded faster to high arousing or unpleasant stimuli. Scalp topographies revealed more pronounced gender differences on central and left hemisphere areas. Our results suggest a difference in the way emotional stimuli are processed by genders: unpleasant and high arousing stimuli evoke greater ERP amplitudes in women relatively to men. It also seems that unpleasant or high arousing stimuli are temporally prioritized during visual processing by both genders.

Positive schizotypy scores correlate with left visual field interference for negatively valenced emotional words: A lateralized emotional Stroop study

Fourteen men scoring high and 14 men scoring low on a positive schizotypy scale participated in a lateralized emotional Stroop task. Vocal reaction times for color naming of neutral, positive and negative emotional words were recorded. Across participants, the color naming of neutral and emotional words was slightly faster to right than to left visual field presentations. In men with high scores on positive schizotypy, the presentation of negative words to the left visual field (right hemisphere) resulted in significant affective interference with color naming, which was significantly larger than in men with low scores. Correlational analysis also showed that positive schizotypy was significantly associated with emotional interference in response to LVF negative words. The outcome is discussed in terms of right hemispheric engagement in negative emotions in high positive schizotypic men.