Abstract
The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential (ERP) component over visual cortical areas that is modulated by the emotional intensity of a stimulus. However, the functional significance of this neural modulation remains elusive. We conducted two experiments in which we studied the relation between LPP amplitude, subsequent perceptual sensitivity to a non-emotional stimulus (Experiment 1) and visual cortical excitability, as reflected by P1/N1 components evoked by this stimulus (Experiment 2). During the LPP modulation elicited by unpleasant stimuli, perceptual sensitivity was not affected. In contrast, we found some evidence for a decreased N1 amplitude during the LPP modulation, a decreased P1 amplitude on trials with a relatively large LPP, and consistent negative (but non-significant) across-subject correlations between the magnitudes of the LPP modulation and corresponding changes in d-prime or P1/N1 amplitude. The results provide preliminary evidence that the LPP reflects a global inhibition of activity in visual cortex, resulting in the selective survival of activity associated with the processing of the emotional stimulus.
Highlights
In recent years, emotion has become an important and wellrespected topic of neuroscientific research
In Experiment 2, we examined the relationship between late positive potential (LPP) magnitude and neural signatures of visual cortical excitability: the P1 and N1 components of the event-related potential (ERP) waveform evoked by non-emotional stimuli
These findings provide some support for the global inhibition hypothesis, but any truly existing effect is likely to be modest
Summary
Emotion has become an important and wellrespected topic of neuroscientific research. The LPP has been used in a range of applied fields. It has been used as an index of abnormal emotional responding in both adults and children (Dennis and Hajcak, 2009; Horan et al, 2010; Marissen et al, 2010), to study social biases in ingroup/outgroup classification (Hurtado et al, 2009; Crites et al, 2010), and as a tool in criminological lie detection (Matsuda et al, 2009)
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