NEURAL MARKERS OF EMOTION REACTIVITY AND COGNITIVE CONTROL FRONTAL OSCILLATORY ACTIVITY TO NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE STIMULI
Date
2018-05
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Frontal theta-band oscillations (neural oscillatory activity occurring between
around 4-8 Hz) ostensibly signal the need for and communicate top-down cognitive
control across broad networks of brain regions (Cavanagh & Frank, 2014) and have
been shown to increase in intensity during situations of conflicting stimulus-response
demands, novel information, and the commission of errors (Cavanagh & Frank, 2014;
Folstein & Van Petten, 2008). Because negative emotional states are thought to recruit
relatively automatic cognitive control processes for the purpose of emotion regulation
(e.g., Ochsner & Gross, 2005) and because previous work demonstrated that negative
stimuli elicit greater frontal theta activity than neutral stimuli (Valadez & Simons, in
preparation) it was hypothesized that both negative and positive emotional stimuli
would induce increased low frontal electrophysiological activity (delta (1-4 Hz) &
theta (4-8 Hz)) relative to emotionally neutral stimuli. Contrary to findings reported by
Valadez and Simons (in preparation), frontal theta activity in response to negative
stimuli was not significantly different from that in response to positive or neutral
stimuli. Instead, frontal activity in the delta band was greater for negative stimuli
relative to positive and neutral stimuli. Results suggest that frontal delta oscillations
may be involved in processing potentially threatening stimuli (i.e., negative stimuli)
and that theta activity may facilitate relatively automatic emotion regulation when
stimuli are arousing but not perceived as a threat (i.e., positive stimuli). Future
directions and potential clinical implications are discussed.
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Keywords
Psychology, neural markers, frontal oscillaroty activity