Emotional Arousal in Temporal Lobectomy: Autonomic and Performance Effects of Success and Failure Feedback

Abstract

Both theory and evidence suggest that right temporal lobectomy (RTL) patients show hypoarousal and left temporal lobectomy (LTL) patients show relative hyperarousal (Davidson, Fedio, Smith, Aurielle, & Martin, 1992). However, we hypothesized that these differences occur only under passive, nonevaluative stimulus conditions. The present study employed, instead, conditions of performance evaluation. We recorded the skin conductance responses (SCRs) and reaction times (RTs) of RTLs, LTLs, and normal controls (NCs) during easy and difficult trial blocks on a target-detection task, with auditory success/failure feedback. We found that LTLs exhibited relative hypoarousal and retarded RTs and that RTLs were normally aroused following success feedback. These results demonstrated that the arousal level of LTLs is contingent on stimulus conditions, thus calling into question the theory that this group is generally subject to hyperarousal. The two-dimensional theory of the neural processing of emotional experience partially explains our data.

Alcoholic Tendency and Eeg Arousal in Women: Effects of Family History and Personality Under Emotional Stimulation

“…Familiality studies showing risk ratios of 3:1 to 5:1 in children of alcoholics support this conclusion, as do twin and adoption studies demonstrating at least a 50% heritability for the disorder (Light, Irvine, & Kjerulf, 1996). In addition, recent molecular genetic studies have identified both probable markers for alcoholism and protective genes , as well as markers for addictive behavior (Davidson, Smith, Tamny, & Fedio, 1996;Thome, Gerwitz, Weijer, Wiesbeck, & Henn, 2000). It now appears that alcoholism is a quantitative disorder involving multiple genes (quantitative trait loci) that act to predispose the individual to the disease (Grisel, 2000).…”