Event Abstract Back to Event Moving beyond valence and arousal: Emotional processing of human injury, snake and gun images is indexed by N2 activity Rosemaree Miller1* and Frances Martin1* 1 University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Australia Images featuring fear or disgust content are typically rated with similar levels of valence and arousal. Contamination, human injury and other disgust-inducing images however have been found to elicit different patterns of ERP activity in N2, P2 and the late positive component (LPC) compared with other high-arousing, unpleasant images (Carretié et al., 2011; Sarlo, Buodo, Poli & Palomba, 2005; Schäfer et al., 2010; Wheaton et al., 2013). Although images depicting mutilated, dead or bloodied humans are used as unpleasant visual stimuli in emotion research, human injury may not be processed in the same manner as other unpleasant, fear-relevant or disgust-inducing content. To examine this hypothesis 40 participants (23 female) viewed images with guns, humans or reptiles as ERP activity was recorded from 64 electrode sites. A 2[Sex: female, male] x 3(Semantic: gun, human, reptile) x 3(Threat: active, passive, neutral) mixed design was followed. Active and passive versions of high-arousing unpleasant images (handguns, snakes, and injured humans) controlled for the potential effect of threat on physiological arousal. Significant interactions between Semantic and Threat for N2, P2 and LPC mean amplitudes were driven by active and passive versions of injured human stimuli. For N2 mean amplitude, Sex, Semantic, and Threat also interacted significantly. N2 activity was greater for passive and neutral images than active images for the human stimuli compared to gun and reptile stimuli, but only for females. This modulation of N2 activity by images featuring injured and non-injured humans, at least in the female participants, shows this component could index the differentiation of fear-relevant and disgust images, particularly for females. Keywords: ERP, Sex, disgust, emotional processing, unpleasant images Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Emotional and Social Processes Citation: Miller R and Martin F (2015). Moving beyond valence and arousal: Emotional processing of human injury, snake and gun images is indexed by N2 activity. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00274 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Miss. Rosemaree Miller, University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Ourimbah, Australia, rosemaree.miller@uon.edu.au Dr. Frances Martin, University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Ourimbah, Australia, Frances.Martin@newcastle.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Rosemaree Miller Frances Martin Google Rosemaree Miller Frances Martin Google Scholar Rosemaree Miller Frances Martin PubMed Rosemaree Miller Frances Martin Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.