Abstract
Aversive odors are highly salient stimuli that serve a protective function. Thus, emotional reactions elicited by negative odors may be hardly influenceable. We aim to elucidate if negative mood induced by negative odors can be modulated automatically by positively valenced stimuli. We included 32 healthy participants (16 men) in an fMRI design combining aversive and neutral olfactory stimuli with positive and neutral auditory stimuli to test the influence of aversive olfactory stimuli on subjective emotional state and brain activation when combined with positive and neutral auditory stimuli. The behavioral results show an interaction of negative olfactory stimuli on ratings of disgust, perceived valence of music, and subjective affective state, while positive auditory stimulation did not show this interaction. On a neuronal level, we observed main effects for auditory and olfactory stimulation, which are largely congruent with previous literature. However, the pairing of both stimuli was associated with attenuated brain activity in a set of brain areas (supplementary motor area, temporal pole, superior frontal gyrus) which overlaps with multisensory processing areas and pave the way for automatic emotion regulation. Our behavioral results and the integrated neural patterns provide evidence of predominance of olfaction in processing of affective rivalry from multiple sensory modalities.
Highlights
Emotions and their regulation affect our social interaction, our well-being and influence what kind of decisions we make, playing an important role in our everyday life.Emotions have been described as a perception-valuation-action sequence (Etkin et al, 2015), in which an affective stimulus is perceived, internal evaluation is made and this leads to an action, Implicit Affective Rivalry either physically or mentally
Male participants showed lower disgust ratings when a positive auditory stimulus was paired with negative olfaction, while in women the combination of positive music and negative odor led to increased report of disgust
Main Effect of Negative Olfactory Stimulation BOLD responses associated with O− > O0 were found bilaterally in the anterior insula, bilaterally in the parietal operculum (OP4, OP1), in the right Rolandic operculum (BA44), bilaterally in the temporal pole, bilaterally in the inferior parietal cortex, bilaterally in the precentral gyrus, in the left postcentral gyrus (BA1, BA4p), bilaterally in the primary somatosensory cortex (BA3a, BA3), in the right superficial amygdala, entorhinal cortex extending into the piriform cortex, and bilaterally in the middle cingulate cortex (Figure 3/red, Table 3)
Summary
Emotions and their regulation affect our social interaction, our well-being and influence what kind of decisions we make, playing an important role in our everyday life.Emotions have been described as a perception-valuation-action sequence (Etkin et al, 2015), in which an affective stimulus is perceived, internal evaluation is made and this leads to an action, Implicit Affective Rivalry either physically or mentally. Automatic processes that are not intentionally initiated or guided seem to play an important role in the broader picture of emotion reactivity and regulation (Gross, 1998; Mauss et al, 2006, 2007; Kohn et al, 2011; Etkin et al, 2015). This differentiation is supported by findings of studies showing different brain regions involved in either consciously controlled or automatic, non-intentional emotional regulatory processes (Ochsner et al, 2009; Gyurak et al, 2011). Areas widely believed to be solely important for motor functions like the cerebellum (Schutter and Van Honk, 2009; Strata et al, 2011; Baumann and Mattingley, 2012; Stoodley et al, 2012) or Brodmann Area 6, known as premotor cortex and supplementary motor area, seem to be involved in cognitive and automatic up- and down-regulation of negative emotions (Ochsner et al, 2004; Kohn et al, 2011, 2014, 2015; Buhle et al, 2013; Pawliczek et al, 2013; Morawetz et al, 2017)
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