When do negative and positive emotions modulate working memory performance? (original) (raw)
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S4.3 Effect of negative and positive emotion on working memory performance: an fMRI study
Clinical Neurophysiology, 2011
The present study investigated when emotion modulates working memory from the perspective of neural activation. Using fMRI, we measured brain activity during the encoding and retrieval phases of a reading span test (RST) that used emotional contexts. The emotional RST required participants to read sentences that elicited negative, neural or positive emotional states while they were memorizing target words from the sentences. Compared with the neutral RST, the negative RST activated the right amygdala during the reading phase. Significant activation was also found in the parahippocampal gyrus, albeit only after activation of the amygdala became comparable to that in the neutral RST. In contrast, the positive RST activated the substantia nigra during the reading phase relative to the neutral RST. These findings suggest that negative and positive emotions modulate working memory through distinctive neural circuits. We also discuss possible relationships between emotional modulation and working memory capacity. P ositive and negative emotions often affect cognitive task performance 1-4 , with emotionally relevant events being more often remembered than neutral ones, especially in episodic memory 5,6 . Additionally, emotionally valenced stimuli are expected to affect working memory 7 , which supports goal-directed cognitive task performance, by maintaining and manipulating relevant information 8 .
Current Psychology
It is already well established that the working memory system can be influenced by moods or emotional stimuli. However, the exact combined impact of these two on the performance of working memory remains a puzzle. To examine the effect that the emotional content of stimuli has on working memory performance, 90 participants performed a 2-back task with emotional content (positive, neutral, and negative words) when they were in a positive, neutral, or negative mood. Repeated-measures ANOVA with mood as between-subjects factor and emotional load as within-subjects factor revealed a main effect of emotional content for both performance accuracy and reaction times in a 2-back task, and a main effect of mood for performance accuracy. Participants reacted significantly faster to negative words independently of their mood state. They were significantly more accurate when they were in the positive mood, but when they processed positive words they were less accurate. Additionally, to test whe...
Negative emotion modulates prefrontal cortex activity during a working memory task: a NIRS study
Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014
This study investigated the neural processing underlying the cognitive control of emotions induced by the presentation of task-irrelevant emotional pictures before a working memory task. Previous studies have suggested that the cognitive control of emotion involves the prefrontal regions. Therefore, we measured the hemodynamic responses that occurred in the prefrontal region with a 16-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) system. In our experiment, participants observed two negative or two neutral pictures in succession immediately before a 1-back or 3-back task. Pictures were selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). We measured the changes in the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin (oxyHb) during picture presentation and during the n-back task. The emotional valence of the picture affected the oxyHb changes in anterior parts of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) (located in the left and right superior frontal gyrus) and left inferior frontal gyrus du...
Incidental effects of emotional valence in single word processing: an fMRI study CHAPTER 2
The present study aimed at identifying the neural responses associated with the incidental processing of the emotional valence of single words using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty right-handed participants performed a visual lexical decision task, discriminating between nouns and orthographically and phonologically legal nonwords. Positive, neutral and negative word categories were matched for frequency, number and frequency of orthographic neighbors, number of letters and imageability. Response times and accuracy data differed significantly between positive and neutral, and positive and negative words respectively, thus, replicating the findings of a pilot study. Words showed distributed, mainly left hemisphere activations, indicating involvement of a neural network responsible for semantic word knowledge. The neuroimaging data further revealed areas in left orbitofrontal gyrus and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus with greater activation to emotional than to neutral words. These brain regions are known to be involved in processing semantic and emotional information. Furthermore, distinct activations associated with positive words were observed in bilateral middle temporal and superior frontal gyrus, known to support semantic retrieval, and a distributed network, namely anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, lingual gyrus and hippocampus when comparing positive and negative words. The latter areas were previously associated with explicit and not incidental processing of the emotional meaning of words and emotional memory retrieval. Thus, the results are discussed in relation to models of processing semantic and episodic emotional information.
Psychology & Neuroscience Effect of emotionally valenced stimuli on working memory performance
Working memory (WM) is the ability to keep information cognitively in course for a brief period of time, but with enough duration as to complete a task. Few is known about how the different emotional valences of the perceived information provoke effect over WM, since it is known that for WM task performance, motivated behavior receives important emotional influence. Method, a total of 27 subjects university students, randomly selected, participated in the study. Data was acquired from 23 right handed subjects (20.22 yr mean age, SD = 1.47), 52.2% male (20.09 yr old mean age, SD = 1.7), 47.8% female (20.35 yr mean age, SD = 1.3). Instruments and procedure, influence of emotional valence in a WM task was measured using content from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), subjects were asked to remember the first image of the pair, compare the second image with it. Accuracy of response (AR) measured by the number of correct responses, and reaction times (RT) were measured for each subject. Results show that the RT is shortest for pictures with neutral valence and longest for negative valence, MANOVA statistics showed a significant main effect of emotional valence. It was found that the AR is highest for pictures with neutral valence and lowest for negative valence. Conclusions, emotionally charged IAPS pictures were processed worse than neutral ones during working memory task performance, there is an effect of emotion valence on RT, and that this is higher for negative pictures compared with positive ones.
Incidental effects of emotional valence in single word processing: An fMRI study
NeuroImage, 2005
The present study aimed at identifying the neural responses associated with the incidental processing of the emotional valence of single words using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty right-handed participants performed a visual lexical decision task, discriminating between nouns and orthographically and phonologically legal nonwords. Positive, neutral and negative word categories were matched for frequency, number and frequency of orthographic neighbors, number of letters and imageability. Response times and accuracy data differed significantly between positive and neutral, and positive and negative words respectively, thus, replicating the findings of a pilot study. Words showed distributed, mainly left hemisphere activations, indicating involvement of a neural network responsible for semantic word knowledge. The neuroimaging data further revealed areas in left orbitofrontal gyrus and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus with greater activation to emotional than to neutral words. These brain regions are known to be involved in processing semantic and emotional information. Furthermore, distinct activations associated with positive words were observed in bilateral middle temporal and superior frontal gyrus, known to support semantic retrieval, and a distributed network, namely anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, lingual gyrus and hippocampus when comparing positive and negative words. The latter areas were previously associated with explicit and not incidental processing of the emotional meaning of words and emotional memory retrieval. Thus, the results are discussed in relation to models of processing semantic and episodic emotional information.
Cognition & Emotion, 2010
Recent neuroimaging studies have examined the effects of anxiety on cognitive processing in the presence of emotional distractors. However, when the target stimuli themselves are emotional, it is unclear whether emotion acts as a distracting or enhancing influence. We predicted that anxiety levels would modulate the effect of emotion on neural activity in a valence-specific manner. In the current experiment, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine activity in brain regions associated with cognitive and affective control. Twenty-nine healthy adults, rated for trait anxiety, performed blocks of a 2-back working-memory task (using faces) in which facial expressions were either entirely neutral, mixed neutral and fearful, or mixed neutral and happy. Behavioural results showed no effects of anxiety on either accuracy or response time for any stimulus type. In event-related analyses, dorsal prefrontal regions tended to show reduced activation for emotional faces relative to neutral, suggesting possible neural facilitation, while the amygdala and ventrolateral regions linked to affective-interference showed increased activation to emotional faces. Moreover, in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann area 45), anxiety discriminated between the response to happy trials and fear trials. The higher the anxiety score, the greater the increase in activation for fear faces versus neutral. By contrast, the lower the anxiety score, the greater the increase in activation to happy faces. These results suggest that emotional content in target stimuli can both enhance and interfere with neural processing, and these effects may depend on emotional valence and participants' anxiety levels.
Paying attention to emotion: An fMRI investigation of cognitive and emotional Stroop tasks
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2003
Cognition and emotion are intricately intertwined, because individuals orient toward, perceive, and interpret external stimuli in the context of their motivational and behavioral significance. Information associated with danger, for example, may be especially likely to capture or engage attention. Behavioral studies have confirmed that people are slower to shift attention away from words with emotional significance (e.g., , supporting the notion that emotional factors may have an important influence on the deployment and operation of attention. How emotional factors modulate activity in brain regions involved in attention is thus an important question. To address this issue, in the present investigation, we examined the impact of emotional salience on activity in neural systems of attention by examining the influence of emotional and nonemotional distractors on brain activation.
Affective Modulation of Working Memory Maintenance: The Role of Positive and Negative Emotions
Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2021
The present study investigated the impact of task-irrelevant emotional images on the retention of information in spatial working memory (WM). Two experiments employed a delayed matchingto-sample task where participants had to maintain the locations of four briefly presented squares. After a short retention interval, a probe item appeared and participants were required to indicate whether the probe position matched one of the previously occupied square positions. During the retention interval, task-irrelevant negative, positive, or neutral emotional pictures were presented. The results revealed a dissociation between negative and positive affect on the participants' ability to hold spatial locations in WM. While negative affective pictures reduced WM capacity, positive pictures increased WM capacity relative to the neutral images. Moreover, the specific valence and arousal of a given emotional picture was also related to WM performance: While higher valence enhanced WM capacity, higher levels of arousal in turn reduced WM capacity. Together, our findings suggest that emotions up-or down-regulate attention to items in WM and thus modulate the shortterm storage of visual information in memory.
Effect of emotionally valenced stimuli on working memory performance
Psychology & Neuroscience, 2015
Working memory (WM) is the ability to keep information cognitively in course for a brief period of time, but with enough duration so as to complete a task. Little is known about how the different emotional valences of the perceived information provoke effect over WM because it is known that for WM task performance, motivated behavior receives important emotional influence. A total of 27 university students, randomly selected, participated in the study. Data were acquired from 23 right-handed subjects (20.22 years mean age, SD ϭ 1.47), 52.2% male (20.09 years mean age, SD ϭ 1.7 years) and 47.8% female (20.35 years mean age, SD ϭ 1.3 years). The influence of emotional valence in a WM task was measured using content from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Subjects were asked to remember the first image of the pair and compare the second image with it. Accuracy of response (AR) was measured by the number of correct responses, and reaction times (RTs) were measured for each subject. Results show that the RT is shortest for pictures with neutral valence and longest for negative valence. Multivariate analyses of variance statistics showed a significant main effect of emotional valence. It was found that the AR is highest for pictures with neutral valence and lowest for negative valence. In conclusion, emotionally charged IAPS pictures were processed worse than neutral ones during WM task performance. There is an effect of emotion valence on RT, and this is higher for negative pictures compared with positive ones.