NEURAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING EMOTIONAL PROCESSING IN HEALTHY OLDER ADULTS: ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF VISUAL AFFECTIVE WORD PROCESSING
Tiffany
Au1*,
Anthony
Angwin2,
David
Copland1, 2,
George
Mellick3, 4,
John
O'Sullivan1, 3,
Peter
Silburn1, 3,
Gerard
Byrne5, 6 and
Nadeeka
Dissanayaka1, 3
-
1
UQ Centre for Clinical Research, The University of Queensland , Australia
-
2
University of Queensland, School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, Australia
-
3
Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, Neurology Research Centre, Australia
-
4
Griffith University, Eskitis Institute for Cell & Molecular Therapies, Australia
-
5
The University of Queensland, School of Medicine, Australia
-
6
Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Australia
BACKGROUND: Emotions govern the way in which people view and make judgements or decisions. To understand the underlying neural mechanisms involved in emotional processing, this study employs an affective priming paradigm combined with electroencephalography (EEG).
METHODS: Seventeen healthy older adults performed a word affective priming task that allowed identification of automatic processing of emotional information. Two words (neutral or negatively valenced) were consecutively presented on a computer screen at a 150 millisecond interval, and participants were instructed to quickly evaluate the valence of the second word (target). While performing the task Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded using a 128 channel high density EEG system. Net station and E-Prime software were used for data acquisition and SPSS was used for analysis. ERPs generated when responding to target words were examined. A 2X2 Repeated measures ANOVA was performed for midline brain regions for the time windows 200-350ms and 300-500ms.
RESULTS: Faster reaction times for congruent in comparison to incongruent words was observed when participants responded to negative targets [F(1,16) = 5.12, P=0.04]. Larger amplitudes for congruent negative in comparison to neutral targets were observed for 200-350ms at AFz [F(1,14) = 11.36, P=0.001] and Fz [F(1,14) = 10.73, P=0.006], and 300-500ms at FCz [F (1,14) = 8.10, P=0.01] and CPz [F (1,14) = 6.722, P=0.02]. CONCLUSION: Results indicated priming effects when evaluating negative targets. ERP results suggested attentional biases towards negative target valences. This study including older adults expands on the current emotional processing literature which has mainly focused on young adults.
Keywords:
Event Related Potential (ERP),
emotional processing,
Affective Priming,
Healthy adults,
words
Conference:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Emotion and Social
Citation:
Au
T,
Angwin
A,
Copland
D,
Mellick
G,
O'Sullivan
J,
Silburn
P,
Byrne
G and
Dissanayaka
N
(2012). NEURAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING EMOTIONAL PROCESSING IN HEALTHY OLDER ADULTS: ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF VISUAL AFFECTIVE WORD PROCESSING.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00121
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Received:
13 Oct 2012;
Published Online:
17 Nov 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Tiffany Au, UQ Centre for Clinical Research, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, tiffany.au@uqconnect.edu.au