Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Psychophysiology. 2021 Apr;58(4):e13766. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13766. Epub 2021 Jan 22.
Stimuli encountered in the environment are continuously evaluated according to their affective stimulus significance. Numerous event-related potential studies have shown that the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP) are larger for pictures high in emotional arousal compared to low arousing images. Here, we used a case-by-case approach to determine the emotional modulation of the EPN and LPP at the level of the individual case. We probed the effect in three studies regarding behavior systems of predator fear, disease avoidance, and sexual reproduction. In each study, high and low arousing pictures from the respective behavior system were presented and event-related brain potentials measured. At the group level, previous findings regarding an enhanced EPN and LPP for high compared to low arousing stimuli were replicated. Novel findings were observed when analyzing each case individually. The majority of participants showed significantly larger EPN and LPP amplitudes to pictures showing threatening compared to harmless animals (15 and 16 out of 16 tests, respectively), images of disease and mutilation compared to neutral people (15 and 17 out of 18 tests, respectively), and high-arousing erotic compared to romantic pictures (17 and 17 out of 17 tests, respectively). Further analyses exploring the tradeoff between specificity and sensitivity suggest reliance on picture categories of sexual reproduction and disease avoidance. Overall, the present findings demonstrate that the case-by-case approach can be useful for revealing a general principle of emotional stimulus processing common-to-all. Implications for the reproducibility of the findings and biomarker development are discussed.
环境中遇到的刺激会根据其情感刺激意义不断进行评估。许多事件相关电位研究表明，与低唤醒图像相比，高唤醒图片的后正成分（EPN）和晚期正成分（LPP）更大。在这里，我们采用逐个案例的方法来确定 EPN 和 LPP 在个体案例层面的情感调制。我们通过三个研究来探究捕食者恐惧、疾病回避和性生殖等行为系统的情绪调节作用。在每项研究中，都呈现了来自相应行为系统的高唤醒和低唤醒图片，并测量了事件相关脑电位。在群体水平上，重复了先前关于高唤醒刺激比低唤醒刺激产生更大的 EPN 和 LPP 的发现。当单独分析每个案例时，观察到了新的发现。大多数参与者在看到威胁性（而非无害性）动物的图片时，EPN 和 LPP 振幅明显增大（16 次测试中的 15 次和 16 次），在看到疾病和残缺的图片时，EPN 和 LPP 振幅明显增大（18 次测试中的 15 次和 17 次），在看到高唤醒色情图片时，EPN 和 LPP 振幅明显增大（17 次测试中的 17 次）。进一步的分析探索了特异性和敏感性之间的权衡，表明依赖于性生殖和疾病回避的图片类别。总体而言，本研究结果表明，逐个案例的方法可用于揭示普遍存在于所有情感刺激处理中的一般原则。讨论了这些发现的可重复性和生物标志物开发的影响。
