Visual search for fearful stimuli: ERP phase-locking properties of emotional processing
Strelzyk, F.1, Britz, P.1, Sá, D. F.2, Müller, F.-N.1, and Naumann, E.1
1Psychophysiologisches Labor, Universität Trier; 2Institut für Psychobiologie - Abteilung für Klinische Physiologie, Universität Trier
Human cognition is severely impacted by emotion. Evidence demonstrating this effect is derived from visual search paradigms that involve emotional stimuli. In paradigms that require subjects to judge whether or not all of the pictures of a 2x2 or 3x3 grid are from the same category, emotional deviants are detected faster than neutral deviants. Previous work from our lab has replicated the results of such a standard paradigm using behavioral data, event-related potentials (ERPs), and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI). However, after having optimized the paradigm with a more complete set of neutral and emotional stimuli, our results have not yielded a general search advantage for emotional pictures. After reanalyzing the ERP-data with the aim of investigating more of the electrophysiological properties of the effects, we found that the phase locking in the 12-18 Hz band supports our previous findings. These results continue to question whether the stimuli's emotional properties are processed in the investigated paradigm.