Dynamic variation in pleasure in children predicts nonlinear change in lateral frontal brain electrical activity.

Abstract

Individual variation in the experience and expression of pleasure may relate to differential patterns of lateral frontal activity. Brain electrical measures have been used to study the asymmetric involvement of lateral frontal cortex in positive emotion, but the excellent time resolution of these measures has not been used to capture second-by-second changes in ongoing emotion until now. The relationship between pleasure and second-by-second lateral frontal activity was examined with the use of hierarchical linear modeling in a sample of 128 children aged 6-10 years. Electroencephalographic activity (EEG) was recorded during "pop-out toy," a standardized task that elicits pleasure. The task consisted of three epochs: an anticipation period sandwiched between two play periods. The amount of pleasure expressed during the task predicted the pattern of non-linear change in lateral frontal activity. Children who expressed increasing amounts of pleasure during the task exhibited increasing left lateral frontal activity during the task, whereas children who expressed contentment exhibited increasing right/decreasing left activity. These findings indicate that taskdependent changes in pleasure relate to dynamic, non-linear changes in lateral frontal activity as the task unfolds. Keywords pleasure; EEG; lateral frontal cortex Pleasure, the euphoric feeling that can occur as a result of the internal representation of hedonic information, is an important ingredient of positive affect (Meehl, 1975;Klein, 1987). Activity in subcortical brain structures and multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex relate to the occurrence of pleasure (Berridge, 2003;Leon & Shadlen, 1999;Gable and Harmon-Jones, 2008). Specifically, the ability to consciously experience pleasure relates to (1) an ability to internally represent hedonic information and (2) translate represented hedonic information into conscious positive emotional experience; and these processes are likely subserved by prefrontal Dubois, 2002). In particular, it is likely that the representational (e.g. the ability to represent the hedonic value of 4 drops of a sweet liquid versus 8 drops), executive (e.g. enacting a plan to obtain a reward), and working memory functions subserved by activity in the frontal cortex-particularly the lateral prefrontal cortex -contribute to pleasure capacity (Watanabe, 1996;Hikosaka & Watanabe, 2000;Pochon et al., 2002;Kobayashi, Lauwereyns, Koizumi, Sakagami & Hikosaka, 2002;Schultz, 2006).In addition to neuroimaging techniques, brain electrical (i.e. electroencephalographic-EEG) measures of frontal function have been extensively used to examine relations between baseline levels of frontal activity and the propensity to experience certain emotional states. Specifically, the left and right frontal regions of the cerebral hemisphere are differentially involved in the expression of approach-related emotions and withdrawal related emotions, respectively (Davidson, 1992;Wheeler, Davidson & Tomarken, 1993;Davidson, 2004a;Urry, Nitschke, Dolski...

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