ERPs and the Study of Emotion

We are susceptible to failures of awareness if a stimulus occurs unexpectedly and our attention is focused elsewhere. Such inattentional blindness is modulated by various parameters, including stimulus attributes, the observer's cognitive resources, and the observer's attentional set regarding the primary task. In three behavioral experiments with a total of 360 participants, we investigated whether mere semantic preactivation of the color of an unexpected object can reduce inattentional blindness. Neither explicitly mentioning the color several times before the occurrence of the unexpected stimulus nor priming the color more implicitly via colorrelated concepts could significantly reduce the susceptibility to inattentional blindness. Even putting the specific color concept in the main focus of the primary task did not lead to reduced inattentional blindness. Thus, we have shown that the failure to consciously perceive unexpected objects was not moderated by semantic preactivation of the objects' most prominent feature: its color. We suggest that this finding reflects the rather general principle that preactivations that are not motivationally relevant for one's current selection goals do not suffice to make an unexpected object overcome the threshold of awareness.

This study investigated the link between self-reference and attentional engagement in adults with (n = 22) and without (HC; n = 24) Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants completed the Self-Referent Encoding Task (SRET). MDD participants endorsed significantly fewer positive words and more negative words as self-descriptive than HC participants. A whole-scalp data analysis technique revealed that the MDD participants had larger difference wave (negative words minus positive words) ERP amplitudes from 380–1000ms across posterior sites, which positively correlated with number of negative words endorsed. No group differences were observed for earlier attentional components (P1, P2). The results suggest that among adults with MDD, negative stimuli capture attention during later information processing; this engagement is associated with greater self-referent endorsement of negative adjectives. Sustained cognitive engagement for self-referent negative stimuli may be an important target for neurocognitive depression interventions.

There is preliminary evidence to suggest that worry is associated with dysregulated emotion processing resulting from sustained attention to emotional versus neutral stimuli; however, this hypothesis has not been directly tested in prior research. Therefore, the current study used the event-related late positive potential (LPP) to directly examine if high levels of trait worry moderate sustained attention to emotional versus neutral stimuli. Electroencephalogram data was recorded while twenty-two women passively viewed neutral, positive, dysphoric and threatening emotional images. Consistent with our hypotheses, higher levels of worry were associated with larger LPP amplitudes for emotional images but not neutral images. Importantly, the positive correlations between trait worry and LPP responses to threatening and positive images were maintained even when controlling for the influence of current anxiety symptoms, suggesting that worry may influence emotion processing whether or not the person is currently anxious. This sustained attention to emotional information may be one mechanism underlying how trait worry increases risk for anxiety disorders.