Farkas Andrew H, Gehr Matthew C, Jia Han, Sabatinelli Dean
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2025 Jan;62(1):e14765. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14765.
Emotional experiences involve dynamic multisensory perception, yet most EEG research uses unimodal stimuli such as naturalistic scene photographs. Recent research suggests that realistic emotional videos reliably reduce the amplitude of a steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP) elicited by a flickering border. Here, we examine the extent to which this video-ssVEP measure compares with the well-established Late Positive Potential (LPP) that is reliably larger for emotional relative to neutral scenes. To address this question, 45 participants viewed 90 matched pairs of realistic videos and scenes. Consistent with prior work, reduced 7-8 Hz ssVEP amplitude was evident during emotional relative to neutral videos. However, this reduction in power was not specific to the driving frequency of 7.5 Hz, and in fact, Fourier transformation analyses limited to 7.5 Hz were not modulated by video content. Still, at the group level, the video-driven reductions in 7-8 Hz power and LPP modulation by scenes produced similarly large valence effects, and both measures strongly correlated with arousal ratings. Consistent with previous research, the scene-LPP was sensitive to specific emotional contents (erotica and gore) somewhat inconsistent arousal ratings. In contrast, the video-driven oscillation modulation did not show this content sensitivity and was better explained by individual arousal ratings per video clip. In sum, these results show that the 7.5 Hz flickering-border paradigm does not index emotional engagement with video stimuli, yet emotional videos do evoke robust decreases in 3-10 Hz oscillatory power that is somewhat distinct from emotional modulation of the scene-evoked LPP. Matched emotional video and scenes evoke large EEG responses compared with neutral content within-participant. Our findings align with previous research indicating that video modulation of power around the evoked 7.5 Hz ssVEP frequency (7-8 Hz) serves as a reliable emotional measure. However, further analyses reveal that this effect is attributable to a general decrease in power across the 3-10 Hz frequency range.
情感体验涉及动态多感官感知，但大多数脑电图（EEG）研究使用单峰刺激，如自然场景照片。最近的研究表明，逼真的情感视频能可靠地降低闪烁边界诱发的稳态视觉诱发电位（ssVEP）的幅度。在此，我们研究这种视频 - ssVEP测量方法与成熟的晚期正电位（LPP）相比的程度，LPP在情感场景相对于中性场景时可靠地更大。为解决这个问题，45名参与者观看了90对匹配的逼真视频和场景。与先前的研究一致，相对于中性视频，情感视频期间7 - 8Hz的ssVEP幅度明显降低。然而，这种功率降低并非特定于7.5Hz的驱动频率，实际上，限于7.5Hz的傅里叶变换分析并未受视频内容调制。尽管如此，在群体水平上，视频驱动的7 - 8Hz功率降低和场景对LPP的调制产生了类似大小的效价效应，并且这两种测量方法都与唤醒评分密切相关。与先前的研究一致，场景 - LPP对特定情感内容（色情和血腥）敏感，但唤醒评分有些不一致。相比之下，视频驱动的振荡调制未显示这种内容敏感性，并且每个视频片段的个体唤醒评分能更好地解释这一现象。总之，这些结果表明，7.5Hz闪烁边界范式并未指示对视频刺激的情感参与，但情感视频确实会引起3 - 10Hz振荡功率的强烈降低，这在某种程度上与场景诱发的LPP的情感调制不同。与参与者内部的中性内容相比，匹配的情感视频和场景会引起较大的脑电图反应。我们的研究结果与先前的研究一致，表明在诱发的7.5Hz ssVEP频率（7 - 8Hz）附近的功率视频调制可作为一种可靠的情感测量方法。然而，进一步分析表明，这种效应归因于3 - 10Hz频率范围内功率的普遍降低。
