Incidental positive emotion modulates neural response to outcome valence in a monetarily rewarded gambling task.

Choices are influenced by incidental emotions. To understand the neural mechanisms underlying the potential effects of incidental emotions on outcome processing, we conducted two experiments measuring feedback-related negativity (FRN) as a function of outcome (gain and loss) and emotional context. Experiment 1 used happy, neutral, and sad faces. Experiment 2 used pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant emotional scenes. We expected that incidental emotions would influence outcome processing at the behavioral level in line with the cognitive themes associated with each emotion. At a neural level, the effect of emotion based on outcome was expected in FRN. Participants chose one of two gambles presented on either side of an emotional face (Experiment 1) or on the scene (Experiment 2), and were later shown the outcome. Behaviorally, both the experiments showed emotion specific carryover effects on outcome experience in line with the cognitive appraisal tendencies associated with specific emotions. In both experiments, mean amplitude of FRN measured related to the outcome at Fz and FCz showed a significant effect of outcome with larger amplitude for loss compared to gain. The interaction between emotion and outcome was significant at FCz in Experiment 1 and at FPz in Experiment 2. The amplitude difference between loss and gain was larger for positive emotional context compared to neutral and negative emotional contexts, indicating a dopaminergic basis moderating the emotion-outcome processing interaction.