The influence of emotional interference on cognitive control: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies using the emotional Stroop task

Abstract

The neural correlates underlying the influence of emotional interference on cognitive control remain a topic of discussion. Here, we assessed 16 neuroimaging studies that used an emotional Stroop task and that reported a significant interaction effect between emotion (stimulus type) and cognitive conflict. There were a total of 330 participants, equaling 132 foci for an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis. Results revealed consistent brain activation patterns related to emotionally-salient stimuli (as compared to emotionally-neutral trials) during cognitive conflict trials [incongruent trials (with task-irrelevant information interfering), versus congruent/baseline trials (less disturbance from task-irrelevant information)], that span the lateral prefrontal cortex (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus), the medial prefrontal cortex, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Comparing mild emotional interference trials (without semantic conflict) versus intense emotional interference trials (with semantic conflict), revealed that while concurrent activation in similar brain regions as mentioned above was found for intense emotional interference trials, activation for mild emotional interference trials was only found in the precentral/postcentral gyrus. These data provide evidence for the potential neural mechanisms underlying emotional interference on cognitive control, and further elucidate an important distinction in brain activation patterns for different levels of emotional conflict across emotional Stroop tasks.

Neural substrates of the emotion-word and emotional counting Stroop tasks in healthy and clinical populations: A meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies

“…In contrast to these predictions, however, the activity of prefrontal and parietal regions has been consistently observed during the EST (Dresler et al, 2012;Herrington et al, 2005;Lagopoulos and Malhi, 2007;Wingenfeld et al, 2009). These findings complement the notion of the engagement of a cognitive control network during tasks that target emotion-cognition interactions (Cromheeke and Mueller, 2014), including cognitive regulation of negative affect (Ochsner and Gross, 2005;Ochsner et al, 2012) and interference induced by emotional stimuli (Song et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2016). Therefore, it is conceivable that the presentation of emotional distractors induces enhanced regulatory engagement of cognitive control regions, rather than reduces activity in these regions.…”

Brain functional connectivity dynamics in the aftermaths of affective and cognitive events

“…Importantly there were no main effects or interactions involving the task, confirming that both our Stroop and Flanker paradigms elicited generally similar cognitive control performances. These results indicate a robust modulation of interference effects / cognitive conflict (I>C) by negative affective state (van Steenbergen 2015; Song et al 2017). To further clarify these effects, we calculated a differential CE index (RT to current incongruent minus current congruent trials), which showed a significant increase in the negative affect context compared to the neutral one (F= (1,126)=19.9 p<.05…”

“…1A). Based on previous behavioral (van Steenbergen et al 2010;Schuch and Koch 2014;Gendolla et al 2015;van Steenbergen 2015) and neuroimaging work (Eryilmaz et al 2011;van Steenbergen et al 2015;Borchardt et al 2017;Song et al 2017;Young et al 2017), we predicted that negative affective contexts would cause distinctive changes among functionally integrated brain-wide networks at rest, including the DMN, SN, FPCN, and possibly other limbic networks (e.g., centered on amygdala and insula), with particular temporal fluctuations and distinctive distribution as a function of the preceding events. This allowed us to investigate several key questions including: (1) whether negative affect episodes produce lingering changes in subsequent brain activity and connectivity at rest, (2) whether these neural changes are also sensitive to the cognitive demands of executive control tasks, and (3) whether performance in executive control tasks themselves is altered by negative affect.…”

“…Cognitive control is defined as the flexible regulation of behavior in the pursuit of internal goals (Egner 2007;Helfrich and Knight 2016), and commonly assessed by Stroop and Flanker tasks where responding to goal-relevant targets is tested in the presence of distracting information (Botvinick et al 2001;Schmidt et al 2015). Negative emotions have been shown to alter cognitive control in such tasks at both the behavioral (van Steenbergen et al 2010;Schuch et al 2012;Brown et al 2014;Schuch and Koch 2014) and neural levels (Egner et al 2008;Etkin et al 2011;Braem et al 2013;Brown et al 2014;Song et al 2017; see also van Steenbergen 2015 for a review). Here we built on previous work showing an impact of negative affective episodes on subsequent brain resting state (Eryilmaz et al 2011) and cognitive control performance (Schuch and Koch 2014;van Steenbergen et al 2015), by probing for modulations of intrinsic functional brain connectivity and dynamics at the whole brain level following both affective and cognitive challenges.…”

Neurocognitive and psychiatric markers for addiction: Common vs. specific (endo)phenotypes for opiate and stimulant dependence

“…Externalizing traits are characterized by neurocognitive deficits in impulse control, including: (1) increased reward sensitivity (Bava and Tapert, 2010;Huijbregts et al, 2008;Stout et al, 2004;Stout et al, 2005); (2) decreased loss aversion (Ahn et al, 2014;Passarotti et al, 2010;Stout et al, 2004;Stout et al, 2005); (3) increased delay discounting (Kirby, K. N. et al, 1999;Reynolds, 2006;Reynolds and Fields, 2012); and (4) decreased response inhibition (Castellanos-Ryan et al, 2016;Castellanos-Ryan et al, 2011;Castellanos-Ryan et al, 2014;Nigg, 2000). In contrast, internalizing traits have been associated with a neurocognitive profile characterized by: (1) reward & punishment processing abnormalities (Roiser and Sahakian, 2013;Smoski et al, 2008); (2) increased loss and risk aversion (Smoski et al, 2008); (3) decreased delay discounting (Lempert and Pizzagalli, 2010;Liu et al, 2012); (4) increased attentional lapses (Erickson et al, 2005); and (5) increased negative affect (Etkin et al, 2011;Mitterschiffthaler et al, 2008;Song et al, 2017;Surguladze et al, 2005;Williams et al, 1996).…”