Dataset Information

Asymmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds: Evidence from pupillometry.

ABSTRACT: In daily life, our emotions are often elicited by a multimodal environment, mainly visual and auditory stimuli. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the symmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds. In this study, we aimed to elucidate the relationship of attentional states to emotional unimodal stimuli (pictures or sounds) and emotional responses by measuring the pupil diameter, which reflects the emotional arousal associated with increased sympathetic activity. Our hypothesis was that the emotional responses to both the image and sound stimuli are symmetrical: emotion might be suppressed when attentional resources are allocated to another stimulus of the same modality as the emotional stimulus-such as a dot presented at the same time as an emotional image, and a beep sound presented at the same time as an emotional sound. In our two experiments, data for 24 participants were analyzed for a pupillary response. In experiment 1, we investigated the relationship of the attentional state with emotional visual stimuli (International Affective Picture System) and emotional responses by using pupillometry. We set four task conditions to modulate the attentional state (emotional task, no task, visual detection task, and auditory detection task). We observed that the velocity of pupillary dilation was faster during the presentation of emotionally arousing pictures compared to that of neutral ones, regardless of the valence of the pictures. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on the task condition. In experiment 2, we investigated the relationship of the attentional state with emotional auditory sounds (International Affective Digitized Sounds) and emotional responses. We observed a trend towards a significant interaction between the stimulus and the task conditions with regard to the velocity of pupillary dilation. In the emotional and auditory detection tasks, the velocity of pupillary dilation was faster with positive and neutral sounds than negative sounds. However, there were no significant differences between the no task and visual detection task conditions. Taken together, the current data reveal that different pupillary responses were elicited to emotional visual and auditory stimuli, at least in the point that there is no attentional effect to emotional responses to visual stimuli, despite both experiments being sufficiently controlled to be of symmetrical experimental design.

SUBMITTER: Nakakoga S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7135059 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Asymmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds: Evidence from pupillometry.

Nakakoga Satoshi S Higashi Hiroshi H Muramatsu Junya J Nakauchi Shigeki S Minami Tetsuto T

PloS one 20200406 4

In daily life, our emotions are often elicited by a multimodal environment, mainly visual and auditory stimuli. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the symmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds. In this study, we aimed to elucidate the relationship of attentional states to emotional unimodal stimuli (pictures or sounds) and emotional responses by measuring the pupil diameter, which reflects the emotional arousal associated with increased sympathetic activity. ...[more]

PMID: 32251474

Similar Datasets

Project description:Pain experience involves a complex relationship between sensory and both emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by different neural pathways. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, the influence of emotions on pain under unaware conditions is much less known. The need to better characterise the relationship between pain processing and emotional factors is crucial for dealing with chronic pain conditions. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore the neural correlates relating to the influence of visual masking emotional stimulation on the processing of painful stimuli in chronic pain patients suffering from fibromyalgia (FM). Twenty FM and 22 healthy control (HC) women participated in the study. The experimental masking paradigm consisted of a rapid succession of two types of stimuli, where a masked picture (neutral, negative or pain-related) was followed by a laser stimulus (painful or not painful). LEP activity was recorded at sixty scalp electrodes. An LEP-amplitude approach was used to quantify the main cerebral waves linked to pain response. ANOVAs indicated that the posterior regions of the P1 component were sensitive to experimental manipulation (p<0.05). Specifically, FM patients showed higher amplitudes to painful stimuli preceded by pain-related pictures compared with painful trials preceded by other emotional pictures. The FM group also showed greater amplitudes than those in the HC group in P2a and P2b waves. In addition to the scalp data, at the neural level the posterior cingulate cortex, lingual gyrus and insular cortex showed higher activation in the FM group than in the HC group. Our findings show an early cerebral modulation of pain (as reflected by the P1) in FM patients, suggesting that only pain-related information, even when it is unconsciously perceived, is capable to enhance exogenous (automatic) attention, increasing the neural activity involved in processing painful stimulation. Further research is needed to fully understand unconscious emotional influences on pain in fibromyalgia.

Dataset Information

Asymmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds: Evidence from pupillometry.

Publications

Asymmetrical characteristics of emotional responses to pictures and sounds: Evidence from pupillometry.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets