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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Emotion Regulation and Processing
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1464888

Identifying P100 and N170 as electrophysiological markers for conscious and unconscious processing of emotional facial expressions

Provisionally accepted
Lennard Herzberg Lennard Herzberg 1*Julia Schräder Julia Schräder 1,2Han-Gue Jo Han-Gue Jo 3Ute Habel Ute Habel 1,4Lisa Wagels Lisa Wagels 1,2
  • 1 Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany, Aachen, Germany
  • 2 JARA-Translational Brain Medicine, Aachen, Germany, Jülich, Germany
  • 3 School of Software, Kunsan National University, Gunsan, South Korea, Gunsan, Republic of Korea
  • 4 Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine: JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship (INM 10), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany, Jülich, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Everyday life requires correct processing of emotions constantly, partly occurring unconsciously. This study aims to clarify the effect of emotion perception on different event-related potentials (ERP) (P100, N170). The P100 and N170 are tested for their suitability as electrophysiological markers in unconscious processing. Using a modified backward masking paradigm, 52 healthy participants evaluated emotional facial expressions (happy, sad, or neutral) during EEG recording. While varying primer presentation time (16.7 ms for unconscious; 150 ms for conscious perception), either congruent or incongruent primer / target emotions were displayed. The N170 was significantly larger in trials with conscious compared to unconscious primer presentation, while the P100 showed opposite results displaying higher amplitudes in unconscious versus conscious trials. The N170 amplitude was modulated by emotion. Both P100 and N170 were modulated by stimulus presentation time, demonstrating the suitability as potential biomarkers and for systematic research on conscious and unconscious face processing.

    Keywords: Event-related potentials, Unconsciousness, emotion processing, P100, N170

    Received: 15 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Herzberg, Schräder, Jo, Habel and Wagels. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lennard Herzberg, Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany, Aachen, Germany

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