Centroparietal Late Positive Potential Research Articles

Electrophysiological Correlates of Vocal Emotional Processing in Musicians and Non-Musicians.

Musicians outperform non-musicians in vocal emotion recognition, but the underlying mechanisms are still debated. Behavioral measures highlight the importance of auditory sensitivity towards emotional voice cues. However, it remains unclear whether and how this group difference is reflected at the brain level. Here, we compared event-related potentials (ERPs) to acoustically manipulated voices between musicians (n = 39) and non-musicians (n = 39). We used parameter-specific voice morphing to create and present vocal stimuli that conveyed happiness, fear, pleasure, or sadness, either in all acoustic cues or selectively in either pitch contour (F0) or timbre. Although the fronto-central P200 (150-250 ms) and N400 (300-500 ms) components were modulated by pitch and timbre, differences between musicians and non-musicians appeared only for a centro-parietal late positive potential (500-1000 ms). Thus, this study does not support an early auditory specialization in musicians but suggests instead that musicality affects the manner in which listeners use acoustic voice cues during later, controlled aspects of emotion evaluation.

Emotional Perception: Divergence of Early and Late Event-related Potential Modulation.

The early posterior negativity (EPN) is a mid-latency ERP component that is reliably enhanced by emotional cues, with a deflection beginning between 150 and 200 msec after stimulus onset. The brief, bilateral occipital EPN is followed by the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP), a long duration slow-wave that is strongly associated with emotional arousal ratings of scenes. A recent study suggests that the EPN is particularly sensitive to human bodies in scenes, independent of emotional intensity. Here, we directly investigate the influence of human body features on EPN modulation, using emotional and neutral scenes depicting people across a range of body exposures and orientations, in addition to scenes of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant animals. The results demonstrate that the EPN is quite sensitive to human body features and weakly related to arousal ratings, whereas the LPP is strongly modulated by scenes that receive high arousal ratings. Based on these results and relevant work on body-specific visual perception, we speculate that modulation of the EPN may strongly reflect the early detection of human bodies, which serves as a predictor of emotional significance, whereas LPP modulation is more closely associated with the extended elaborative processing of scenes that are explicitly judged to be emotionally arousing.

Measuring brain potentials of imagination linked to physiological needs and motivational states.

While EEG signals reflecting motor and perceptual imagery are effectively used in brain computer interface (BCI) contexts, little is known about possible indices of motivational states. In the present study, electrophysiological markers of imagined motivational states, such as craves and desires were investigated. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 31 participants during perception and imagery elicited by the presentation of 360 pictograms. Twelve micro-categories of needs, subdivided into four macro-categories, were considered as most relevant for a possible BCI usage, namely: primary visceral needs (e.g., hunger, linked to desire of food); somatosensory thermal and pain sensations (e.g., cold, linked to desire of warm), affective states (e.g., fear: linked to desire of reassurance) and secondary needs (e.g., desire to exercise or listen to music). Anterior N400 and centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) were measured and statistically analyzed. N400 and LPP were differentially sensitive to the various volition stats, depending on their sensory, emotional and motivational poignancy. N400 was larger to imagined positive appetitive states (e.g., play, cheerfulness) than negative ones (sadness or fear). In addition, N400 was of greater amplitude during imagery of thermal and nociceptive sensations than other motivational or visceral states. Source reconstruction of electromagnetic dipoles showed the activation of sensorimotor areas and cerebellum for movement imagery, and of auditory and superior frontal areas for music imagery. Overall, ERPs were smaller and more anteriorly distributed during imagery than perception, but showed some similarity in terms of lateralization, distribution, and category response, thus indicating some overlap in neural processing, as also demonstrated by correlation analyses. In general, anterior frontal N400 provided clear markers of subjects' physiological needs and motivational states, especially cold, pain, and fear (but also sadness, the urgency to move, etc.), than can signal life-threatening conditions. It is concluded that ERP markers might potentially allow the reconstruction of mental representations related to various motivational states through BCI systems.

Affective touch during the processing of angry facial expressions: an event-related potential study

It has been shown that affective touch can have stress-buffering effects. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated whether affective touch can reduce emotional distress and associated late positivity while viewing angry facial expressions. A total of 122 females (mean age = 23 years) were randomly assigned to one of three groups to either receive slow/soft brushing of their forearm (affective touch), fast brushing (nonaffective touch), or no touch while viewing images depicting angry and neutral facial expressions. The participants rated their affective state (valence, arousal) before and after the experiment. They also rated the perceived intensity of the angry facial expressions and the pleasantness of touch during the experiment. Components of the Late Positive Potential (LPP) in response to the images that are associated with stimulus significance, attention allocation, and emotion regulation (early LPP: 400–1000 ms; late LPP: 1000–3000 ms) were extracted for a frontal and a centroparietal cluster. Affective touch was associated with reduced amplitudes of the late LPP in the frontal cluster but did not affect centroparietal LPPs (early, late). Affective touch was rated as more pleasant than nonaffective touch but did not change reported valence, arousal, and perceived anger intensity. In conclusion, affective touch modulated a neural indicator of stimulus significance but did not influence self-report measures. More naturalistic touch settings might enhance the effects.

The neural correlates of interference control dysfunction of working memory in major depressive disorder: An event-related potential study.

Interference control function is a key function in a series of specific functions of working memory (WM), which is usually impaired in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Event-related potentials (ERPs) have advantages in exploring the neural processing of interference control and WM impairment, and therefore, it is helpful to further understand the neural mechanism of MDD. In the present study, 44 patients with MDD and 44 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. All participants completed a 4-gradient difficulty Brown-Peterson task (BPT), whose difficulty was manipulated by changing the demand of interspersed distraction tasks. High-density EEG was simultaneously recorded. The hit rate and reaction time (RT) toward the target stimulus as well as the underlying ERP features were analyzed. The results showed that, when compared with HCs, MDD patients had significantly lower hit rates and longer RTs among all four difficulties of BPT. For ERP components, no significant between-group difference was found in either N100 or P200 average amplitudes; however, the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) amplitude of both MDD group and HC group decreased with the increase of BPT difficulty, despite the pattern of the HC group was relative moderate. For both groups, the LPP amplitude was significantly smaller in high-order difficult BPT tasks than in low-order difficult tasks. Moreover, LPP amplitude in high-order difficult tasks was much smaller in MDD group than that of HC group. Our findings suggest that failure to control interference well may play a critical role in the impairment of WM in patients with MDD, and provided new evidence that the neural correlates of interference control dysfunction of WM in MDD.

Variations in the regulation of affective neural responses across three cultures.

In the present research, we assessed the effects of culture on the ability to regulate affective neural responses. Using an event-related potential design focusing on the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP), we found that cultural groups differed in their ability to intentionally regulate these responses. As a group, European Americans demonstrated successful up-regulation of the LPP in response to positive and negative valence images, as did participants from Mexican cultural backgrounds who also showed successful down-regulation of the LPP in response to positive valence images. As a group, participants from Chinese cultural backgrounds did not show evidence of successful up- or down-regulation of LPP responses. This work confirms and extends preliminary findings of cultural variation in emotion regulation abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Regulation of negative emotions through positive reappraisal and distancing in high-trait-anxious women

BackgroundPositive reappraisal and distancing are two distinct cognitive reappraisal strategies for emotion regulation. Critically however, research examining the impact of elevated trait anxiety on cognitive reappraisal has often conflated these strategies. Thus, the present study investigated whether high-trait-anxious (HTA) women can effectively utilize positive reappraisal and distancing to regulate emotional responses to negative stimuli. MethodsTwenty-six HTA women and twenty-seven low-trait-anxious (LTA) women were investigated in a self-generated reappraisal paradigm. Subjective measures of emotional regulation and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants were instructed to passively view neutral or negative pictures, or to reinterpret negative pictures in a positive way (positive reappraisal) or a detached and unemotional way (distancing). ResultsHTA women, as compared to LTA women, reported smaller reductions in negative affect after positive reappraisal and smaller reductions in emotional arousal after distancing. Though ERP data did not reveal corresponding differences in the centro-parietal late positive potential during emotion regulation, data did reveal HTA women exhibited enhanced recruitment of cognitive control during positive reappraisal and greater preparatory processing before engaging in distancing. LimitationsFuture research should examine the generalizability of the present results in clinical anxiety individuals, male sample and other reappraisal strategies. ConclusionsOverall, HTA women appeared to recruit more cortical resources, suggestive of compensatory mechanisms, to achieve a similar performance as LTA women when engaging in positive reappraisal and distancing strategies to regulate negative emotions. Therefore, the findings demonstrate that HTA women are characterized by the inefficient implementation of positive reappraisal and distancing strategies.

Romantic love and attention: Early and late event-related potentials

The beloved likely attracts attention. We tested whether the beloved captures early automatic attention, as indicated by an early posterior negativity (EPN) in a typical rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, while replicating previous findings that the beloved receives sustained motivated attention, as indicated by an enhanced late positive potential (LPP) in a standard passive viewing task. Participants viewed beloved, friend, and stranger pictures in RSVP and standard passive viewing tasks. Participants felt most pleasant and aroused while viewing beloved pictures. In the RSVP task, there was a left lateral parietal EPN for the beloved (vs. friend and stranger) between 225 and 300 ms. In the standard passive viewing task, the midline centroparietal LPP between 400 and 1000 ms was larger in response to the beloved than friend and stranger. So, the beloved captures early automatic attention as well as sustained motivated attention, likely because they are evolutionarily significant.

Using emotion regulation strategies after sleep deprivation: ERP and behavioral findings.

Sleep deprivation is suggested to impact emotion regulation, but few studies have directly examined it. This study investigated the influence of sleep deprivation on three commonly used emotion regulation strategies (distraction, reappraisal, suppression) in Gross's (1998) process model of emotion regulation. Young healthy adults were randomly assigned to a sleep deprivation group (SD; n = 26, 13 males, age = 20.0 ± 1.7) or a sleep control group (SC; n = 25, 13 males, age = 20.2 ± 1.7). Following 24-h sleep deprivation or normal nighttime sleep, participants completed an emotion regulation task, in which they naturally viewed or applied a given emotion regulation strategy towards negative pictures, with electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. A reduction in the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes towards negative pictures from the naturally viewing condition to a regulated condition was calculated as an index of regulatory effects. Comparisons between the two groups indicated that sleep deprivation significantly impaired the regulatory effects of distraction and reappraisal on LPP amplitudes. Suppression did not reduce LPP amplitudes in either group. In addition, habitual sleep quality moderated the effect of sleep deprivation on subjective perception of emotional stimuli, such that sleep deprivation only made good sleepers perceive negative pictures as more unpleasant and more arousing, but it had no significant effect on poor sleepers' perception of negative pictures. Altogether, this study provides the first evidence that sleep deprivation may impair the effectiveness of applying adaptive emotion regulation strategies (distraction and reappraisal), creating potentially undesirable consequences to emotional well-being.

Neural Temporal Dynamics of Social Exclusion Elicited by Averted Gaze: An Event-Related Potentials Study.

Eye gaze plays a fundamental role in social communication. The averted eye gaze during social interaction, as the most common form of silent treatment, conveys a signal of social exclusion. In the present study, we examined the time course of brain response to social exclusion by using a modified version of Eye-gaze paradigm. The event-related potentials (ERPs) data and the subjective rating data showed that the frontocentral P200 was positively correlated with negative mood of excluded events, whereas, the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) was positively correlated with the perceived ostracism intensity. Both the P200 and LPP were more positive-going for excluded events than for included events. These findings suggest that brain responses sensitive to social exclusion can be divided into the early affective processing stage, linking to the early pre-cognitive warning system; and the late higher-order processes stage, demanding attentional resources for elaborate stimuli evaluation and categorization generally not under specific situation.

Exploring deficient emotion regulation in adult ADHD: electrophysiological evidence.

Emotional dysregulation (ED) is being increasingly recognized as a core feature of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the pathophysiological underpinnings remain unclear. In this study, we provide meaningful electrophysiological evidence of ED in adult patients with ADHD (n=39) compared to healthy controls (n=40) by exploring the electrophysiological correlates of the emotion regulation strategies reappraisal, distraction, and expressive suppression. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during passive viewing of neutral and negative images, as well as during emotion regulation. The patients with ADHD exhibited increased frontal late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes during passive viewing of the aversive images and during emotion regulation. Compared with the healthy controls, a subgroup of medication-naïve patients with ADHD (n=25) also exhibited larger centroparietal LPP amplitudes and provided more negative ratings of the aversive and neutral images. Both the frontal and centroparietal LPP amplitudes were associated with ADHD symptom severity. However, no significant deficit in LPP modulation during emotion regulation was found. These findings strongly support the clinical observation of increased emotional responsivity toward negative stimuli and difficulty during the implementation of emotion regulation strategies and thus encourage the implementation of emotion regulation modules in the treatment of adult patients with ADHD.

Something always sticks? how emotional language modulates neural processes involved in face encoding and recognition memory

AbstractLanguage can serve to constrain cognitive and emotional representations. Here, we investigate to what extent linguistic emotional information alters processing of faces with neutral expressions. Previous studies have shown that cortical processing of emotional faces differs from that of neutral faces. Electroencephalography (EEG) has revealed emotion effects for early and late event-related potentials (ERPs) such as the N1, the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and the Late Positive Potential (LPP). In order to study the effect of language information on face processing, 30 negative and 30 neutral descriptive phrases were presented, each followed by a neutral expression face. Participants were instructed to remember the association. We analyzed the immediate effect of information type on face processing during encoding as well as delayed effects during subsequent recognition. During encoding, faces following negative language information elicited a larger left frontal positivity between 500–700 ms after stimulus onset. During recognition, a left centro-parietal LPP was likewise increased for faces previously associated with a negative description. In addition, the parietal old/new effect was significantly increased for faces with negative information compared to new ones, while no significant effect was observed for faces with neutral information. No information effects on early perceptual ERPs (N1, EPN) were found. Reaction times (RTs) for source memory decisions (negative versus neutral) were significantly shorter for faces with negative versus neutral information. In sum, ERP results indicate that emotional significance can be linguistically induced in faces on a cortical level and, at least in an explicit memory task, this information modulates later stages of face processing and memory. Implications for cognitive effects of public media design are discussed.

Emotional Modulation of the Late Positive Potential during Picture Free Viewing in Older and Young Adults.

Hedonic bias during free viewing of novel emotional and neutral scenes was investigated in older adults and college students. A neurophysiological index of emotional picture processing–the amplitude of the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP)–was recorded from the scalp using a dense sensor array while participants (29 older adults; 21 college students) viewed emotionally engaging or mundane natural scenes that varied in specific content. Both students and older adults showed LPP enhancement when viewing affective, compared to neutral, scenes, and there was no difference in LPP amplitude between older individuals and college students when viewing neutral everyday scenes. However, compared to the college students, older individuals showed attenuated LPP amplitude when viewing emotional scenes, regardless of hedonic valence or specific content. Age related differences could be mediated by a reduction in reactive emotional arousal with age, possible mediated by repeated life exposure to emotional stimuli.

Emotional intensity influences pre-implementation and implementation of distraction and reappraisal.

Although emotional intensity powerfully challenges regulatory strategies, its influence remains largely unexplored in affective-neuroscience. Accordingly, the present study addressed the moderating role of emotional intensity in two regulatory stages--implementation (during regulation) and pre-implementation (prior to regulation), of two major cognitive regulatory strategies--distraction and reappraisal. According to our framework, because distraction implementation involves early attentional disengagement from emotional information before it gathers force, in high-intensity it should be more effective in the short-term, relative to reappraisal, which modulates emotional processing only at a late semantic meaning phase. Supporting findings showed that in high (but not low) intensity, distraction implementation resulted in stronger modulation of negative experience, reduced neural emotional processing (centro-parietal late positive potential, LPP), with suggestive evidence for less cognitive effort (frontal-LPP), relative to reappraisal. Related pre-implementation findings confirmed that anticipating regulation of high-intensity stimuli resulted in distraction (over reappraisal) preference. In contrast, anticipating regulation of low-intensity stimuli resulted in reappraisal (over distraction) preference, which is most beneficial for long-term adaptation. Furthermore, anticipating cognitively demanding regulation, either in cases of regulating counter to these preferences or via the more effortful strategy of reappraisal, enhanced neural attentional resource allocation (Stimulus Preceding Negativity). Broad implications are discussed.

The late positive potential, emotion and apathy in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease is associated with emotional changes including depression, apathy, and anxiety. The current study investigated emotional processing in non-demented individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) using an electrophysiological measure, the centro-parietal late positive potential (LPP). Non-demented patients with Parkinson’s disease (n=17) and healthy control participants (n=16) viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures while EEG was recorded from a 64-channel geodesic net. The Parkinson patients did not differ from controls in terms of early electrophysiological components that index perceptual processing (occipital P100, N150, P250). Parkinson patients, however, showed reduced LPP amplitude specifically when viewing unpleasant, compared to pleasant, pictures as well as when compared to controls, consistent with previous studies suggesting a specific difference in aversive processing between PD patients and healthy controls. Importantly, LPP amplitude during unpleasant picture viewing was most attenuated for patients reporting high apathy. The data suggest that apathy in PD may be related to a deficit in defensive activation, and may be indexed cortically using event-related potentials.

Emotional sounds modulate early neural processing of emotional pictures

In our natural environment, emotional information is conveyed by converging visual and auditory information; multimodal integration is of utmost importance. In the laboratory, however, emotion researchers have mostly focused on the examination of unimodal stimuli. Few existing studies on multimodal emotion processing have focused on human communication such as the integration of facial and vocal expressions. Extending the concept of multimodality, the current study examines how the neural processing of emotional pictures is influenced by simultaneously presented sounds. Twenty pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures of complex scenes were presented to 22 healthy participants. On the critical trials these pictures were paired with pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sounds. Sound presentation started 500 ms before picture onset and each stimulus presentation lasted for 2 s. EEG was recorded from 64 channels and ERP analyses focused on the picture onset. In addition, valence and arousal ratings were obtained. Previous findings for the neural processing of emotional pictures were replicated. Specifically, unpleasant compared to neutral pictures were associated with an increased parietal P200 and a more pronounced centroparietal late positive potential (LPP), independent of the accompanying sound valence. For audiovisual stimulation, increased parietal P100 and P200 were found in response to all pictures which were accompanied by unpleasant or pleasant sounds compared to pictures with neutral sounds. Most importantly, incongruent audiovisual pairs of unpleasant pictures and pleasant sounds enhanced parietal P100 and P200 compared to pairings with congruent sounds. Taken together, the present findings indicate that emotional sounds modulate early stages of visual processing and, therefore, provide an avenue by which multimodal experience may enhance perception.

Emotional perception: Correspondence of early and late event-related potentials with cortical and subcortical functional MRI

This research examines the relationship between brain activity recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event related potentials (ERP) as these responses varied over a series of emotionally evocative and neutral pictures. We investigate the relationship of early occipitotemporal and later centroparietal emotion-modulated ERPs in one sample to fMRI estimates of neural activity in another sample in a replicated experiment. Using this approach, we aimed to link effects found in time-resolved electrocortical measures to specific neural structures across individual emotional and nonemotional picture stimuli. The centroparietal late positive potential (LPP) showed covariation with emotion-modulated regions of hemodynamic activation across multiple dorsal and ventral visual cortical structures, while the early occipitotemporal potential was not reliably associated. Subcortical and corticolimbic structures involved in the perception of motivationally relevant stimuli also related to modulation of the LPP, and were modestly associated to the amplitude of the early occipitotemporal potential. These data suggest that early occipitotemporal potentials may reflect multiple sources of modulation including motivational relevance, and supports the perspective that the slow-wave LPP represents aggregate cortical and subcortical structures involved in emotional discrimination.

Neural activation during the processing of ambiguous fearful facial expressions: An ERP study in anxious and nonanxious individuals

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from anxious and nonanxious participants during performance on a fear detection task. Sequential presentation of gradually increasing fear cues from neutral to fearful allowed an examination of anxiety-related differences in the neural activation patterns corresponding to participants’ overt detection of fear in ambiguous stimuli as well as the activation patterns corresponding to stages of fear processing preceding overt fear detection. While centro-parietal Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitude of nonanxious participants was significantly modulated by increases in stimulus fear intensity preceding overt fear detection, no such LPP sensitivity was detected in anxious participants. Additionally, anxiety group differences as well as emotion related modulation were found for earlier ERP components (P1, P2 and EPN). These findings reveal an anxiety-related dissociation between the early and late processing stages of threat processing. Implications are discussed in light of existing theories of cognitive biases in anxiety.