Emotional intelligence and oscillatory responses to emotional facial expressions

Abstract

Emotional intelligence-related differences in oscillatory responses to emotional facial expressions were investigated in 48 subjects (26 men and 22 women) in age 18-30 years. Participants were instructed to evaluate emotional expression (angry, happy and neutral) of each presented face on an analog scale ranging from -100 (very hostile) to + 100 (very friendly). High emotional intelligence (EI) participants were found to be more sensitive to the emotional content of the stimuli. It showed up both in their subjective evaluation of the stimuli and in a stronger EEG theta synchronization at an earlier (between 100 and 500 ms after face presentation) processing stage. Source localization using sLORETA showed that this effect was localized in the fusiform gyrus upon the presentation of angry faces and in the posterior cingulate gyrus upon the presentation of happy faces. At a later processing stage (500-870 ms) event-related theta synchronization in high emotional intelligence subject was higher in the left prefrontal cortex upon the presentation of happy faces, but it was lower in the anterior cingulate cortex upon presentation of angry faces. This suggests the existence of a mechanism that can be selectively increase the positive emotions and reduce negative emotions.