Abstract
Hemodynamic mismatch responses can be elicited by deviant stimuli in a sequence of standard stimuli even during cognitive demanding tasks. Emotional context is known to modulate lateralized processing. Right-hemispheric negative emotion processing may bias attention to the right and enhance processing of right-ear stimuli. The present study examined the influence of induced mood on lateralized pre-attentive auditory processing of dichotic stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Faces expressing emotions (sad/happy/neutral) were presented in a blocked design while a dichotic oddball sequence with consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in an event-related design was simultaneously administered. Twenty healthy participants were instructed to feel the emotion perceived on the images and to ignore the syllables. Deviant sounds reliably activated bilateral auditory cortices and confirmed attention effects by modulation of visual activity. Sad mood induction activated visual, limbic and right prefrontal areas. A lateralization effect of emotion-attention interaction was reflected in a stronger response to right-ear deviants in the right auditory cortex during sad mood. This imbalance of resources may be a neurophysiological correlate of laterality in sad mood and depression. Conceivably, the compensatory right-hemispheric enhancement of resources elicits increased ipsilateral processing.
Highlights
Laterality effects can emerge as a function of emotional state [1,2,3,4]
Mood induction was confirmed by significant mood effects on the arousal and valence ratings (Figure 2)
The significant time effect emerged between the rating prior to the mood induction and the rating after the third mood induction block (20.37560.106, p = .013; Figure 2a)
Summary
Laterality effects can emerge as a function of emotional state [1,2,3,4]. According to the right-hemisphere hypothesis, the right hemisphere is dominant in the processing of emotions [5,6]. According to the valence hypothesis, the right hemisphere is specialized for processing negative valence and the left hemisphere for processing positive valence [7,8]. Recent work on this topic showed that these two approaches complement each other and reflect different aspects of emotion processing [9,10]. The approach-withdrawal model states that right frontal regions mediate withdrawal behavior (for a review see [11]). A lack of positive affect and approach behavior can be observed in depressive disorder and is associated with a relative decrease of left frontal activation
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