An ERP study on facial emotion processing in young people with subjective memory complaints

Vanesa Perez,Mario Perez-Alarcón,Vanesa Hidalgo,Matias M Pulopulos,Ruth Garrido-Chaves,Alicia Salvador,Tiago O Paiva

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-90861-9

Abstract

Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) are commonly related to aging, but they are also presented by young adults. Their neurophysiological mechanisms are not thoroughly understood, although some aspects related to affective state have been mentioned. Here, we investigated whether facial emotion processing is different in young people with (n = 41) and without (n = 39) SMCs who were exposed to positive, negative, and neutral faces, by recording the event-related potential (ERP) activity. From the ERP activity, the N170 (an index of face processing) and the LPP (an index of motivated attention) components were extracted. Regarding the N170, results showed less amplitude for positive and neutral faces in the participants with SMCs than in those without SMCs. Moreover, women with SMCs displayed longer latencies for neutral faces than women without SMCs. No significant differences were found between the groups in the LPP component. Together, our findings suggest deficits in an early stage of facial emotion processing in young people with SMCs, and they emphasize the importance of further examining affective dimensions.

Highlights

Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) are commonly related to aging, but they are presented by young adults
The N170 component is an early negative component that is detected at 120–200 ms and peaks at approximately 170 ms post-stimulus, which has been proposed as a correlate of the interpretation of a visual stimulus such as a face, it can be induced by other objects consciously interpreted as face-like[32,33]
The aim of the present study was to investigate whether facial emotion processing is different in young women and men with SMCs compared to other groups without SMCs

Summary

Introduction

Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) are commonly related to aging, but they are presented by young adults. Some studies have shown that, in disorders related to cognitive impairment, deficits in the facial emotion processing ability influence social behavior (e.g., the ability to perceive and recognize the affective state of others)[27,28] Along these lines, previous studies have shown a relationship between attentional bias toward negative stimuli and anxiety[20,29], long-term stress[30], and depression[21] in young people. The LPP component is a slow positive potential that occurs at approximately 400–600 ms post stimulus onset, with a maximum peak at the midline central and parietal electrodes, and it shows higher amplitudes for emotional images than for neutral images[36,37], which represents sustained a ttention[20] This component reflects brain electrical activity during both automatic and controlled attentional processing for emotional information, and it indicates more elaborate emotion-related processing, such as high-level recognition processing[38,39]. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have investigated the LPP component on a facial emotion processing task in people with SMCs

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion