Emotional Oddball: A Review on Variants, Results, and Mechanisms

Abstract

It is of the utmost importance for an organism to rapidly detect and react to changes in its environment. The oddball paradigm has repeatedly been used to explore the underlying cognitive and neurophysiological components of change detection. It is also used to investigate the special role of emotional content in perception and attention (emotional oddball paradigm; EOP). In this article, the EOP is systematically reviewed. The EOP is, for instance, used as a tool to address questions as to what degree emotional deviant stimuli trigger orientation reactions, which role the emotional context plays in the processing of deviant information, and how the processing of emotional deviant information differs interindividually (including clinical populations). Two main variants with regard to the emotionality of standards and deviants are defined. Most of the identified EOP studies report EEG data but an overview of behavioral data is also provided in this review. We integrate evidence from 99 EOP experiments and shape the EOP's theoretical background under the consideration of other paradigms’ mechanisms and theories.

Emotional oddball: A review on memory effects

“…Additionally, contrasting emotional standards and emotional deviants (as done in other EOP studies; for a review see Schlüter & Bermeitinger, 2017) could lead to a better understanding of the nature of emotion-induced memory effects.…”

“…It has also been used to investigate the special role of emotional content in perception and attention (emotional oddball paradigm; EOP). In the EOP (as in the oddball paradigm), there are typically two types of stimuli: standards (which are presented in a large majority of trials, generally 80%) and deviants (for a review on the EOP, see Schlüter & Bermeitinger, 2017). The EOP is used as a tool to address questions such as: (a) to what degree do emotional deviant stimuli trigger orientation reactions, (b) which role does the emotional context play in the processing of deviant information, and (c) how does the processing of emotional deviant information differ inter-individually?…”

Proof‐of‐concept evidence for trimodal simultaneous investigation of human brain function

“…The emotional oddball task provides clear targets for expected spatial dissociations in brain response and temporal responses from scalp electrodes, making it an ideal candidate for testing simultaneous multimodal recordings (Moore, Shafer, Bakhtiari, Dolcos, & Singhal, 2019 ). This task has been studied with both fMRI (Fichtenholtz et al, 2004 ; Wang, Krishnan, et al, 2008 ; Wang, LaBar, et al, 2008 ; Wang, McCarthy, Song, & Labar, 2005 ; Yamasaki, LaBar, & McCarthy, 2002 ) and ERP (Briggs & Martin, 2009 ; Schluter & Bermeitinger, 2017 ; Singhal et al, 2012 ). Functional MRI research using the emotional oddball or similar tasks with distraction has shown greater response to goal‐relevant stimuli (targets) compared to distracters in dorsal executive system (DES) regions, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral parietal cortices (dlPFC, LPC), and greater response to distracters compared to targets in ventral affective system (VAS) regions, 1 such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) and the amygdala (Anticevic, Repovs, & Barch, 2010 ; Chuah et al, 2010 ; Denkova et al, 2010 ; Diaz et al, 2011 ; Dolcos, Iordan, & Dolcos, 2011 ; Dolcos & McCarthy, 2006 ; Fichtenholtz et al, 2004 ; Iordan, Dolcos, & Dolcos, 2013 ; Oei et al, 2012 ; Wang et al, 2005 ; Wang, Krishnan, et al, 2008 ; Wang, LaBar, et al, 2008 ; Yamasaki et al, 2002 ; reviewed in Iordan et al, 2013 ), in addition to activities in parietal regions.…”

Non-stationary Group-Level Connectivity Analysis for Enhanced Interpretability of Oddball Tasks

“…Intending to perform analyses with enhanced physiological interpretation, auditory, and visual oddball tasks are often employed to identify perceptual differences, providing a more profound understanding of applications like attention and memory tasks (Kiat et al, 2018), affective computing, motor imagery, as well as in media and information literacy (Schaadt et al, 2013). However, because of limitations of data acquisition and analysis, an open issue in interpreting ERP responses concerns the confidently assessment of the brain networks that may reflect the differential contribution of deviant stimuli, as it requires more cognitive resources than the processing of standard stimuli (Schlüter and Bermeitinger, 2017;Hurtado-Rincón et al, 2018).…”