Electrophysiological normative responses to emotional, neutral, and cigarette-related images

Abstract

To create reproducible emotional probes, affective scientists rely on sets of standardized pictures that are normed using subjective ratings of valence and emotional arousal. Yet, to investigate psychophysiological emotional responses, it might be more appropriate to select pictures using normative neurophysiological responses rather than normative subjective ratings. Here, we provide electrophysiological normative responses for 323 emotional pictures (215 from the IAPS) covering a wide range of categories (erotica, romantic, appetizing foods, landscapes, people engaged in mundane activities, household objects, disgusting objects, accidents, sad people, violence, mutilations, and cigarette-related contents). Event-related potentials (ERPs) and subjective ratings of pleasure and emotional arousal were collected from 763 individuals (52% females, 41% white) aged between 18 and 65 (mean = 43). For each image, the mean amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP, an electrophysiological index of motivational relevance) and the mean subjective ratings of valence and arousal were calculated. We validated our procedure by showing that the subjective ratings of valence and arousal from this sample were highly correlated to the IAPS' published norms (Pearson r=.97 for pleasure and r=.82 for emotional arousal). LPP responses and subjective ratings of emotional arousal also were correlated (Pearson r = .61), but some categories that participants reported being significantly more arousing than neutral (i.e., food, landscapes, and unpleasant objects) did not evoke LPPs significantly different from those evoked by neutral pictures. Researchers interested in probing the brain's affective systems can use these electrophysiological normative responses to create emotional probes that evoke reliable neuroaffective responses.