A Detailed Study on the Modulation of Emotion Processing by Spatial Location

• Published in: Advances in Neural Networks Vol. 5263; pp. 107 - 116
• Main Authors: Liu, Baolin, Xin, Shuai, Jin, Zhixing, Gao, Xiaorong, Gao, Shangkai, Chu, Renxin, Deng, Beixing, Huang, Yongfeng
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Springer Berlin / Heidelberg 2008; Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Attention; Data mining; Emotion; ERP; Spatial location; User interface design & usability
• ISBN: 9783540877318; 3540877312
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-87732-5_13

In this paper two ERP (event-related potential) experiments – one-position (1-P) task and three-position (3-P) task are performed to study how emotion processing is modulated by spatial location. In the 1-P task, emotional pictures are presented centrally and subjects are required to respond when a negative stimulus is onset; while in the 3-P task, stimuli are presented randomly either in a central position, or in a left or right position to the central point. P300 with shorter latency as well as P1/N1 with decreased amplitude was detected in the 3-P task as compared to the 1-P task, which illustrates that the emotion P300 is significantly modulated by spatial location. Unexpectedly, the P300 amplitude shows no significant difference between the two tasks, providing evidence that there is little spatial-attention modulation of arousal rating in the brain’s processing of emotional perception.