Emotional Information Processing and Visual Evoked Brain Potentials

Abstract

Visual evoked potentials to emotional slides presented for 2 sec. were investigated in 13 subjects. 73 emotional slides (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral) were selected from a standardized set of photographic slides, the 1988 International Affective Picture System of Lang, Öhman, and Vaitl. Visual evoked potentials were recorded from three head locations, frontal, central and parietal (Fz, Cz, and Pz). Analyses were performed in the two latency ranges: 300–400 msec. and 400–500 msec. Analyses showed an arousal effect, as indicated by a quadratic trend, indicating that emotional slides (both pleasant and unpleasant) gave higher cortical positivity than neutral ones, for all components. In addition, in the two latency epochs, larger positivities were found at Pz, compared to Fz and Cz, whereas Fz and Cz did not differ from each other.