Neural response to emotional pictures is unaffected by concurrent task difficulty: An event-related potential study.

Abstract

The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential that is enhanced when viewing arousing (pleasant and unpleasant) pictures compared to neutral pictures. The affective modulation of the LPP is believed to reflect the increased attention to, and perceptual processing of, emotional stimuli. The present study examined whether concurrent task difficulty (performing mathematics) would modulate the LPP while participants viewed emotionally arousing stimuli. Results indicated that the LPP was larger following pleasant and unpleasant stimuli than it was following neutral stimuli; moreover, the magnitude of this increase was not influenced by concurrent task difficulty. This finding suggests that the affective modulation of neural activity during picture viewing is relatively automatic and is insusceptible to competing task demands. Results are further discussed in terms of the LPP's role in motivated attention and implications for research on emotion regulation.

Prefrontal-Occipitoparietal Coupling Underlies Late Latency Human Neuronal Responses to Emotion

“…A series of studies controlling the psychological factors that influence the arousal-modulated LPP (Codispoti et al, 2006a;Hajcak and Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Hajcak et al, 2007;Schupp et al, 2007;Foti and Hajcak, 2008;Dunning and Hajcak, 2009;Hajcak et al, 2009) together suggest that this response reflects a combination of "bottom-up" and "top-down" processing (Ferrari et al, 2008). Localizing the cortical generators of the mLPP to frontal The coordinates represent the center of gravity of the clusters.…”

“…Furthermore, arousal modulation is maintained when emotional stimuli are presented as distractors or when participants are engaged in a competing task (Codispoti et al, 2006b). Thus, these observations led to a suggestion that affective modulation of the LPP is an automatic response to motivationally salient stimuli that does not rely on voluntary evaluation of emotional content (Codispoti et al, 2006a;Hajcak et al, 2007).…”

Stop laughing! Humor perception with and without expressive suppression

“…The LPP is increased for the perception of emotional compared to neutral stimuli, and may reflect increased allocation of attention and processing resources (Cacioppo, Crites, Berntson, & Coles, 1993;Cuthbert, Schupp, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 2000;Olofsson, Nordin, Sequeira, & Polich, 2008). This boosted processing of emotional stimuli has been suggested to be independent of competing task demands (Hajcak, Dunning, & Foti, 2007; but see MacNamara, Ferri, & Hajcak, 2011;Schupp, Flaisch, Stockburger, & Junghöfer, 2006). The finding that LPP amplitude can be modulated through reappraisal has led to the proposition that it may constitute a neurophysiological marker of emotion regulation (Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Moser, Hajcak, Bukay, & Simons, 2006;Moser, Krompinger, Dietz, & Simons, 2009).…”

High negative valence does not protect emotional event-related potentials from spatial inattention and perceptual load

“…For example, Lavie stipulated that a working memory load might increase perceptual processing, whereas a perceptual load would decrease perceptual processing. Therefore, the effects of perceptual load on emotional ERPs might differ from those of cognitive load imposed by manipulations such as task difficulty (Hajcak, Dunning, & Foti, 2007) or working memory load (Holmes, Nielsen, Tipper, & Green, 2009;MacNamara, Ferri, & Hajcak, 2011).…”