Emotional content of stimuli improves visuospatial working memory

González-Garrido, Andrés A.; Lopez-Franco, Adriana; Gómez-Velázquez, Fabiola R.; Ramos-Loyo, Julieta; Sequeira, Henrique

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2014.11.014

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, recent studies suggest that the interactive effects of the working memory load and the perceptual load depend on the relationship between the modalities of working memory and stimuli [52, 53]. In our study, although the lexical content of the words was irrelevant to accomplish the C and D tasks, an additional automatic coding of verbal material interfered with visuospatial working memory processing, which probably occurred via the interaction with the executive system due to the natural relevance of verbal stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of verbal task complexity in a working memory paradigm in patients with type 1 diabetes. A fMRI study

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is commonly diagnosed in childhood and adolescence, and the developing brain has to cope with its deleterious effects. Although brain adaptation to the disease may not result in evident cognitive dysfunction, the effects of T1D on neurodevelopment could alter the pattern of BOLD fMRI activation. The aim of this study was to explore the neural BOLD activation pattern in patients with T1D versus that of healthy matched controls while performing two visuospatial working memory tasks, which included a pair of assignments administered through a block design. In the first task (condition A), the subjects were shown a trial sequence of 3 or 4 white squares positioned pseudorandomly around a fixation point on a black background. After a fixed delay, a second corresponding sequence of 3 or 4 red squares was shown that either resembled (direct, 50%) or differed from (50%) the previous stimulation order. The subjects were required to press one button if the two spatial sequences were identical or a second button if they were not. In condition B, the participants had to determine whether the second sequence of red squares appeared in inverse order (inverse, 50%) or not (50%) and respond by pressing a button. If the latter sequence followed an order distinct from the inverse sequence, the subjects were instructed to press a different button. Sixteen patients with normal IQ and without diabetes complications and 16 healthy control subjects participated in the study. In the behavioral analysis, there were no significant differences between the groups in the pure visuo-spatial task, but the patients with diabetes exhibited poorer performance in the task with verbal stimuli (p < .001). However, fMRI analyses revealed that the patients with T1D showed significantly increased activation in the prefrontal inferior cortex, subcortical regions and the cerebellum (in general p < .001). These different activation patterns could be due to adaptive compensation mechanisms that are devoted to improving efficiency while solving more complex cognitive tasks.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of verbal task complexity in a working memory paradigm in patients with type 1 diabetes. A fMRI study

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In sum, the scarce, extant literature is inconsistent regarding the effects of emotion on WM in old age: two studies showed a larger beneficial effect of emotion in old age than in young adulthood, in three studies the emotional enhancement was of similar magnitude for both age groups, and in one case a detrimental emotional effect on binding in old age was reported. These divergent findings reflect the heterogeneity of emotion-related effects on WM observed in studies with young adults: Both enhancement (González-Garrido, López-Franco, Gómez-Velázquez, Ramos-Loyo, & Sequeira, 2015;Jackson, Linden, & Raymond, 2014) and impairments (Fairfield, Mammarella, Di Domenico, & Palumbo, 2015;Kensinger & Corkin, 2003) have been reported.…”

Section: Can Emotional Content Reduce the Age Gap In Visual Working Mmentioning

confidence: 92%

Can emotional content reduce the age gap in visual working memory? Evidence from two tasks

Bermudez

Souza

2016

Cognition and Emotion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ageing is associated with declines in several cognitive abilities including working memory (WM). The goal of the present study was to assess whether emotional information could reduce the age gap in the quantity and quality (precision) of representations in visual WM. Young and older adults completed a serial image recognition (SIR) task and a colour-image binding (CIB) task. Results of the SIR task showed worse performance for negative than neutral and positive images within the older group, hence enlarging the age gap in WM. In the CIB task, recall precision was lower in the old than young adults, showing an ageing decline in the quality of WM representations. Positive images tended to improve precision, but this boost was similar for both age groups. In sum, emotional content did not reduce the age gap in visual WM.

show abstract

“…Therefore, we predicted that attentional processing would be negatively affected in the stress versus control condition. Accordingly, since the P2 component is related to attentional allocation ( Thorpe et al, 1996 ; Yuan et al, 2011 ), with increasing attention resulting in increased P2 amplitudes ( Smid et al, 1999 ; González-Garrido et al, 2015 ), a reduced P2 component was expected for the stress versus control condition due to the effect of psychological stress.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective Stress, Salivary Cortisol, and Electrophysiological Responses to Psychological Stress

Gao

Guan

et al. 2016

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present study aimed to investigate the subjective stress, salivary cortisol, and electrophysiological responses to psychological stress induced by a modified version of a mental arithmetic task. Fifteen participants were asked to estimate whether the multiplication product of two-decimal numbers was above 10 or not either with a time limit (the stress condition) or without a time limit (the control condition). The results showed that participants reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and negative affect in the stress condition than they did in the control condition. Moreover, the salivary cortisol level continued to increase after the stress condition but exhibited a sharp decrease after the control condition. In addition, the electrophysiological data showed that the amplitude of the frontal-central N1 component was larger for the stress condition than it was for the control condition, while the amplitude of the frontal-central P2 component was larger for the control condition than it was for the stress condition. Our study suggests that the psychological stress characteristics of time pressure and social-evaluative threat caused dissociable effects on perception and on the subsequent attentional resource allocation of visual information.

show abstract

Emotional content of stimuli improves visuospatial working memory

Cited by 23 publications

References 39 publications

Effect of verbal task complexity in a working memory paradigm in patients with type 1 diabetes. A fMRI study

Effect of verbal task complexity in a working memory paradigm in patients with type 1 diabetes. A fMRI study

Can emotional content reduce the age gap in visual working memory? Evidence from two tasks

Subjective Stress, Salivary Cortisol, and Electrophysiological Responses to Psychological Stress

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About