title: Face-elicited ERPs and affective attitude: brain electric microstate and tomography analyses.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Although behavioral studies have demonstrated that normative affective traits modulate the processing of facial and emotionally charged stimuli, direct electrophysiological evidence for this modulation is still lacking.
  
  
  METHODS
  Event-related potential (ERP) data associated with personal, traitlike approach- or withdrawal-related attitude (assessed post-recording and 14 months later) were investigated in 18 subjects during task-free (i.e. unrequested, spontaneous) emotional evaluation of faces. Temporal and spatial aspects of 27 channel ERP were analyzed with microstate analysis and low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA), a new method to compute 3 dimensional cortical current density implemented in the Talairach brain atlas.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Microstate analysis showed group differences 132-196 and 196-272 ms poststimulus, with right-shifted electric gravity centers for subjects with negative affective attitude. During these (over subjects reliably identifiable) personality-modulated, face-elicited microstates, LORETA revealed activation of bilateral occipito-temporal regions, reportedly associated with facial configuration extraction processes. Negative compared to positive affective attitude showed higher activity right temporal; positive compared to negative attitude showed higher activity left temporo-parieto-occipital.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These temporal and spatial aspects suggest that the subject groups differed in brain activity at early, automatic, stimulus-related face processing steps when structural face encoding (configuration extraction) occurs. In sum, the brain functional microstates associated with affect-related personality features modulate brain mechanisms during face processing already at early information processing stages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University Hospital, CH-8091, Zurich, Switzerland. dpizzag@psyphw.psych.wisc.edu
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pizzagalli
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Koenig
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Regard
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Pascual-Marqui
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results