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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Decision Neuroscience
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1408526
This article is part of the Research Topic How Do Affective Stimuli Impact Actions? Unveiling the Relationship Between Emotional Stimuli and Motor Behavior View all 5 articles

Does emotional valence affect cognitive performance and neurophysiological response during decision making? A preliminary study

Provisionally accepted
Michela Balconi Michela Balconi 1,2Katia Rovelli Katia Rovelli 1,2*
  • 1 International Research Center for Cognitive Applied Neuroscience, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
  • 2 Research Unit in Affective and Social Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Lombardy, Italy

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

    This study investigated the impact of the emotional valence of external situations (EVES) on cognitive performance and electrophysiological (EEG) responses during decision-making. 26 healthy adults underwent a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test, performing five interview-style discourses. Each discourse entailed preparing a speech under increasingly stressful conditions. Participants were also exposed to gradually increasing EVES (i.e., an examining committee displaying progressively more negative-connoted emotional facial expressions). In addition, after each speech, participants completed an arithmetic task to test how emotional manipulation affected cognitive performance. Behavioral data (preparation times) and EEG data (frequency bands) were collected to assess stress regulation, stress resilience, and cognitive performance. The results indicate that EVES significantly influenced stress regulation and resilience, as reflected in the behavioral data. Neurophysiological findings showed increased parietal lobe activity (P4) in the theta and delta bands with rising emotional valence, plateauing from the preparation of the second discourse onwards. This suggests enhanced emotional processing and attentional demands. However, gamma band activity decreased in P4 during the preparations for the two discourses following the first, indicating a shift of cognitive resources from higher cognitive functions to emotional processing. This highlights the cognitive cost of maintaining performance and stress regulation under emotionally charged conditions. Such findings suggest that emotional valence modulates cognitive performance and that specific neural mechanisms are involved in managing stress responses. The findings underscore the complex relationship between emotion, cognition, and neural mechanisms, offering valuable insights for stress regulation and resilience, and enhancing performance under pressure.

    Keywords: emotional valence, Decision Making, EEG, social stress test, cognitive performance

    Received: 28 Mar 2024; Accepted: 26 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Balconi and Rovelli. 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: Katia Rovelli, International Research Center for Cognitive Applied Neuroscience, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Milan, 20123, Lombardy, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.