Mood States Modulate Activity in Semantic Brain Areas during Emotional Word Encoding

Abstract

It is controversially discussed whether or not mood-congruent recall (i.e., superior recall for mood-congruent material) reflects memory encoding processes or reduces to processes during retrieval. We therefore investigated the neurophysiological correlates of mood-dependent memory during emotional word encoding. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants in good or bad mood states encoded words of positive and negative valence. Words were either complete or had to be generated from fragments. Participants had to memorize words for subsequent recall. Mood-congruent recall tended to be largest in good mood for generated words. Starting at 200 ms, mood-congruent ERP effects of word valence were obtained in good, but not in bad mood. Only for good mood, source analysis revealed valence-related activity in ventral temporal cortex and for generated words also in prefrontal cortex. These areas are known to be involved in semantic processing. Our findings are consistent with the view that mood-congruent recall depends on the activation of mood-congruent semantic knowledge during encoding. Incoming stimuli are more readily transformed according to stored knowledge structures in good mood particularly during generative encoding tasks. The present results therefore show that mood-congruent memory originates already during encoding and cannot be reduced to strategic processes during retrieval.

Neural modulation of directed forgetting by valence and arousal: An event-related potential study

“…Specifically, Kiefer, Schuch, Schenck, and Fiedler (2006) found that while studying positive words, those in positive relative to negative mood states evoked a smaller N400, a component sensitive to semantic incongruence. To the best our knowledge, this is the first study to show an association between negative mood and the emotion-related LPC when viewing emotional items.…”

The Sound of Concepts: Four Markers for a Link between Auditory and Conceptual Brain Systems

“…Minimum norm was computed with depth weighting, spatio-temporal weighting and noise weighting for each individual channel. Cortical currents were determined within the time window during which significant ERP differences were obtained at the time point of maximal global field power (GFP) in the ERP difference waves to ensure optimal signal-to-noise-ratio (Kiefer et al, 2007a). Talairach coordinates for the activation peaks were determined on the 2D surface covering the cortex on which the source solution was computed.…”

The semantic origin of unconscious priming: Behavioral and event-related potential evidence during category congruency priming from strongly and weakly related masked words

“…Although the negative deflection often temporally overlaps with a large positive component (late-positive complex) and does not necessarily appear as a negative potential in absolute terms, this phenomenon is known as the N400 priming effect (Bentin, McCarthy, & Wood, 1985;Kiefer, 2005;Kiefer, Weisbrod, Kern, Maier, & Spitzer, 1998). Intracranial ERP recordings (Nobre & McCarthy, 1995) and source analyses of scalp potentials (Kiefer, Schuch, Schenck, & Fiedler, 2007) have implicated a region in the anterior-medial temporal lobe in generating the N400 ERP component.…”