Neuromagnetic Activity During Recognition of Emotional Pictures

Abstract

Recently studied 'old' stimuli lead to larger frontal and parietal ERP responses than 'new' stimuli. The present experiment investigated the neuromagnetic correlates (MEG) of this 'old-new' effect and its modulation by emotional stimulus content. Highly arousing pleasant, highly arousing unpleasant and un-arousing neutral photographs were presented to the participants with the instruction to memorize them. They were later re-presented together with new photographs in an old-new decision task. In line with previous ERP studies, a long-lasting old-new effect (350-700 ms) was found. Independently, an emotion effect also occurred, as reflected in a, particularly left temporal, activity increase for emotional pictures between 450 and 580 ms. Moreover, only for the pleasant pictures did the early part of the old-new effect, which is thought to reflect familiarity based recognition processes, interact with picture content: The old-new effect for pleasant pictures in frontal regions was larger than the one for neutral or unpleasant pictures between 350 and 450 ms. In parallel, subjects' responses were accelerated towards and biased in favour of classifying pleasant pictures as old. However, when false alarm rate was taken into account, there was no significant effect of emotional content on recognition accuracy. In sum, this MEG study demonstrates an effect of particularly pleasant emotional content on recognition memory which may be mediated by a familiarity based process.

Sex differences in memory of emotional images: A behavioral and electrophysiological investigation

“…Furthermore, in a valence by sex interaction, women showed better accuracy for high valence pictures, an effect absent in men. These results corroborate previous findings of better accuracy for pleasant images (not controlling for arousal or sex) (Kissler and Hauswald, 2008;Lang et al, 1990b;Smith et al, 2004). Moreover, in the arousal by sex interaction, women showed less accuracy for high arousal stimuli, an effect absent in men.…”

“…Bradley et al (1992) also found a delayed new RT for low valence/unpleasant images in a mixed sample. Unpleasant stimuli have been found to delay reaction times in several studies (Kissler and Hauswald, 2008;Maratos et al, 2001;Smith et al, 2004;Van Strien et al, 2009). Indeed, our group of men demonstrated an old-new effect 36% greater in response to unpleasant than to pleasant images.…”

“…(Lang et al, 1990a). Behaviorally, it has been observed that pleasant stimuli are recognized more quickly (Kissler and Hauswald, 2008;Smith et al, 2004;Van Strien et al, 2009) and more accurately than neutral or negative stimuli (Bradley et al, 1992;Lang et al, 1990b). Studies have generally found that emotional stimuli elicit greater ERP amplitudes than do neutral stimuli (Diedrich et al, 1997;Dolcos and Cabeza, 2002;Johnston et al, 1986;Lang et al, 1990b;McNeely et al, 2004;Schupp et al, 2000).…”

Something always sticks? how emotional language modulates neural processes involved in face encoding and recognition memory

“…On the neural level, positive content modulates recognition memory mostly via the familiarity-based frontal old/new effect (e.g. Kissler and Hauswald 2008;Schaefer et al 2011) for which we did not find significant effects.…”

Motivational priming and processing interrupt: Startle reflex modulation during shallow and deep processing of emotional words

“…Elucidating the mechanisms of this advantage for pleasant stimuli is beyond the scope of the present study. Nevertheless, it has been theoretically suggested and empirically demonstrated repeatedly that healthy subjects hold profound biases towards pleasant in contrast to unpleasant and neutral stimuli (e.g., Deldin et al, 2001;Ferré, 2003;Herbert et al, 2008Herbert et al, , 2009Kiefer et al, 2007;Kissler and Hauswald, 2008;Koenig and Mecklinger, 2008;Monnier and Syssau, 2008;Schapkin et al, 2000;Watson et al, 2007). Thus, a processing bias in favour of pleasant stimuli may, at least during deep processing conditions, bias participants' evaluations and bodily emotional responses towards words with pleasant content.…”