Fast access to "hate" and "love": rapid neural responses to emotional categories during word processing
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1
Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Münster, Germany
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2
Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Germany
Neuroscientific and behavioral studies investigating emotional word processing reveal selective and prioritized processing of emotional words (Kissler et al., 2009). Arousal-dependent ERP modulations have been observed as early as the P1 time window (e.g. Ortigue et al., 2004) suggesting the apparent paradox that some linguistic features might be processed before (or in parallel with) their lexical distinction. However, the detailed neural correlates of such early processes are still unknown. The present study intended to explore arousal- and valence-related neural networks by means of a simultaneous MEG-EEG measurement in which subjects were required to silently read streams of positive, negative, and neutral words. Neural sources within the P1 time window (80-120ms) were identified by means of current density reconstruction (L2 minimum norm) based on individualized boundary element models and a cortical constraint. The data reveal an enhanced activation for emotional compared to neutral words in left temporal regions. Furthermore, we observed left-temporal and parietal regions to be more strongly activated in response to positive words compared to negative words, whereas negative words resulted in enhanced activation of right parietal and left anterior cingulate cortex regions. These findings demonstrate that not only arousal- but also valence related aspects of words are encoded by complex cortical networks as early as 100 ms. This corroborates that emotional items receive preferential processing. Overall, these results are compatible with the observation that a range of psycholinguistic processes, up to the level of semantic access, emerge already 100-250 ms after word presentation (Pulvermüller et al., 2009). Funding: Supported by IZKF (Do3/021/10).
Keywords:
EEG,
Language
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Language
Citation:
Keuper
K,
Nordt
M,
Zwanzger
P and
Dobel
C
(2011). Fast access to "hate" and "love": rapid neural responses to emotional categories during word processing.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00203
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Received:
21 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Kati Keuper, Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Münster, Münster, Germany, kati.roesmann@uos.de