Emotional context enhances auditory novelty processing: behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

Abstract

Viewing emotionally negative pictures has been proposed to attenuate brain responses towards sudden auditory events, as more attentional resources are allocated to the affective visual stimuli. However, peripheral reflexes have been shown intensified. These observations have raised the question of whether an emotional context actually facilitates or attenuates processing in the auditory novelty system. Using scalp event-related potentials we measured brain responses induced by novel sounds when participants responded to visual stimuli displaying either threatening or neutral sceneries. We then tested the modulatory effect of the emotional task conditions on auditory responses. Novel sounds yielded a stronger behavioural disruption on subjects' visual task performance when responding to negative pictures compared with when responding to the neutral ones. Accordingly, very early novelty-P3 responses to novel sounds were enhanced in negative context. These results provide strong evidence that the emotional context enhances the activation of neural networks in the auditory novelty system, gating acoustic novelty processing under potentially threatening conditions.

Emotional Cues during Simultaneous Face and Voice Processing: Electrophysiological Insights

“…Also, the more positive-going amplitude for emotional stimuli is consistent with the sensitivity of P300 to stimulus valence, reported for pictures [71] and sounds [72].…”

Brain mechanisms for emotional influences on perception and attention: What is magic and what is not

“…Vuilleumier, 2002;Vuilleumier, 2005), which may beneficially enhance attention towards them (Dennis & Chen, 2007;Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009;Vuilleumier, 2009) and/or alter attention towards other concomitant stimuli in the same or different modalities (e.g. Zeelenberg & Bocanegra, 2010;Dominguez-Borras, Garcia-Garcia, & Escera, 2008). Accordingly, greater responses to emotional faces correlate with better detection across different visual tasks Lim, Padmala, & Pessoa, 2009;Kouider, Eger, Dolan, & Henson, 2009).…”

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEAS) and emotional processing — A behavioral and electrophysiological approach

“…Although the sounds as well as the emotional content of the pictures were irrelevant for the task, the results suggest that the subjects were unable to fully ignore them as indicated by significant effects on performance and brain responses. The distraction effect of task irrelevant auditory stimuli as well as the behavioral disruption due to the processing of task irrelevant negative emotional stimuli have been shown before by other authors (Escera et al, 1998(Escera et al, , 2000Domínguez-Borràs et al, 2008Öhman et al, 2001), whereas the relation between the neurosteroids and emotional processing at the brain level is a new finding.…”

“…An adapted version of a well-established auditory-visual distraction task (Escera et al, 1998(Escera et al, , 2000 was presented with two different conditions, one featuring a neutral (NEU) and one featuring a negative emotional content (NEG), as implemented by Domínguez-Borràs et al (2008). Each condition lasted about 15 min and conditions were performed 2 h apart (beginning to beginning).…”

“…In this paradigm, the negative emotional context is expected to elicit an increased attention capture when compared to non-emotional faces (Öhman et al, 2001) and consequently deteriorate performance . Furthermore, auditory distraction by novel sounds is expected to elicit a novelty-P3 component in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and also deteriorate performance (Corral and Escera, 2008;Domínguez-Borràs et al, 2008;Escera et al, 1998Escera et al, , 2000. We recorded performance parameters, the EEG and took saliva samples in order to determine the hormonal levels before and after the task.…”