Abstract
Imagine a scenario where you are cooking and suddenly, the contents of the pot start to come out, and the oven bell rings. You would have to stop what you are doing and start responding to the changing demands, switching between different objects, operations and mental sets. This ability is known as cognitive flexibility. Now, add to this scenario a strong emotional atmosphere that invades you as you spontaneously recall a difficult situation you had that morning. How would you behave? Recent studies suggest that emotional states do modulate cognitive flexibility, but these findings are still controversial. Moreover, there is a lack of evidence regarding the underlying brain processes. The purpose of the present study was, therefore, to examine such interaction while monitoring changes in ongoing cortical activity using EEG. In order to answer this question, we used two musical stimuli to induce emotional states (positive/high arousal/open stance and negative/high arousal/closed stance). Twenty-nine participants performed two blocks of the Madrid Card Sorting Task in a neutral silence condition and then four blocks while listening to the counterbalanced musical stimuli. To explore this interaction, we used a combination of first-person (micro-phenomenological interview) and third-person (behavior and EEG) approaches. Our results show that compared to the positive stimuli and silence condition, negative stimuli decrease reaction times (RTs) for the shift signal. Our data show that the valance of the first emotional block is determinant in the RTs of the subsequent blocks. Additionally, the analysis of the micro-phenomenological interview and the integration of first- and third-person data show that the emotional disposition generated by the music could facilitate task performance for some participants or hamper it for others, independently of its emotional valence. When the emotional disposition hampered task execution, RTs were slower, and the P300 potential showed a reduced amplitude compared to the facilitated condition. These findings show that the interaction between emotion and cognitive flexibility is more complex than previously thought and points to a new way of understanding the underlying mechanisms by incorporating an in-depth analysis of individual subjective experience.
Highlights
To successfully navigate everyday life, we must continuously balance the need to fulfill a myriad of internal motivations with the capacity to react to a changing environment
A clusterbased permutation test showed more sensors participating in the P300 significant cluster (p < 0.02), corresponding to the silent condition compared to the emotional condition, but not between emotional conditions (Figure 4B)
Behavioral Results We classified participants according to their first-person experience in four groups: facilitated by music A, facilitated by music B, hindered by music A and hindered by music B
Summary
To successfully navigate everyday life, we must continuously balance the need to fulfill a myriad of internal motivations with the capacity to react to a changing environment. As we confront the world, we choose many of the things we do, think or act upon, but we must react to unexpected changes, adapting our behavior and, not infrequently, changing plans In many such situations, adaptive behavior is, from a cognitive perspective, the result of being able to inhibit an ongoing action and effectively reorient our resources to deal with whatever the novel situation turns out to be (Diamond, 2013). The skill that allows us to change between stimuli, operations, and mental sets is known as cognitive flexibility (Lin et al, 2013). It is usually studied through the use of task-switching paradigms: participants must adopt a certain mental set in order to accomplish a given task, but must change it in response to a cue or an instruction, in order to continue to succeed. Errors too are more likely in switch trials than in repetition trials
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