Schupp Harald T, Flösch Karl-Philipp, Kirmse Ursula
Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Mar 10;33(6):2919-2930. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac250.
The present study assessed the hypothesis that electrophysiological markers of emotional and task stimulus significance can be demonstrated in concert at the level of the individual case. Participants (n = 18, 9 females) viewed low and high-arousing pictures selected from behavior systems of sexual reproduction, disease avoidance, and predator fear. Furthermore, to concurrently manipulate task relevance, participants performed an explicit emotion categorization task with either low or high-arousing pictures alternating as target stimuli in separate experimental blocks. Pooled across behavior systems, event-related components sensitive to emotional significance reached statistical significance in 100% of the tests for the early posterior negativity and in 96% of the tests for the late positive potential. Regarding explicit task relevance, the target P3 effect was significant in 96% of the tests. These findings demonstrate that neural markers of stimulus significance driven by emotional picture content and explicit task demands can be assessed at the individual level. Replicating an effect case-after-case provides strong support for an effect common-to-all and may support individual inferences. Contributions of the case-by-case approach to reveal reproducible effects and implications for the development of neural biomarkers for specific affective and cognitive component processes are discussed.
本研究评估了这样一种假设，即情绪和任务刺激显著性的电生理标记可以在个体案例层面协同展现出来。参与者（n = 18，9名女性）观看了从性繁殖、疾病规避和捕食者恐惧等行为系统中选取的低唤醒和高唤醒图片。此外，为了同时操纵任务相关性，参与者在单独的实验块中执行一项明确的情绪分类任务，其中低唤醒或高唤醒图片交替作为目标刺激。综合各行为系统来看，对情绪显著性敏感的事件相关成分在100%的早期后负波测试和96%的晚期正电位测试中达到统计学显著水平。关于明确的任务相关性，目标P3效应在96%的测试中显著。这些发现表明，由情绪图片内容和明确任务需求驱动的刺激显著性神经标记可以在个体水平上进行评估。逐个案例地复制一种效应为普遍存在的效应提供了有力支持，并且可能支持个体推断。讨论了逐个案例方法在揭示可重复效应方面的贡献以及对特定情感和认知成分过程的神经生物标志物开发的意义。
