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Original Research ARTICLE

Response inhibition is linked to emotional devaluation: behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

Monika Kiss^1,*, Jane E. Raymond², Nikki Westoby², Anna C. Nobre³ and Martin Eimer¹

School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

University of Wales, Bangor, UK

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

To study links between the inhibition of motor responses and emotional evaluation, we combined electrophysiological measures of prefrontal response inhibition with behavioural measures of affective evaluation. Participants first performed a Go–Nogo task in response to Asian and Caucasian faces (with race determining their Go or Nogo status), followed by a trustworthiness rating for each face. Faces previously seen as Nogo stimuli were rated as less trustworthy than previous Go stimuli. To study links between the efficiency of response inhibition in the Go–Nogo task and subsequent emotional evaluations, the Nogo N2 component was quantified separately for faces that were later judged to be high versus low in trustworthiness. Nogo N2 amplitudes were larger in response to low-rated as compared to high-rated faces, demonstrating that trial-by-trial variations in the efficiency of response inhibition triggered by Nogo faces, as measured by the Nogo N2 component, co-vary with their subsequent affective evaluation. These results suggest close links between inhibitory processes in top-down motor control and emotional responses.

Keywords:

emotion, response inhibition, event-related brain potentials, Nogo N2 component, cognitive control

Citation:

Kiss M, Raymond JE, Westoby N, Nobre AC and Eimer M (2008). Response inhibition is linked to emotional devaluation: behavioural and electrophysiological evidence. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 2:13. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.013.2008

Received:

16 May 2008;

Paper pending published:

28 June 2008;

Accepted:

19 September 2008;

Published online:

03 October 2008.

Edited by:

Francisco Barcelo, University of Illes Balears, Spain

Reviewed by:

Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, University of Barcelona, Spain
Luiz Pessoa, Indiana University, USA

© 2008 Kiss, Raymond, Westoby, Nobre and Eimer. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence:

Monika Kiss, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK. e-mail: m.kiss@bbk.ac.uk