title: Emotional arousal to negative information after traumatic experiences: an event-related brain potential study.
abstract: Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during an emotional Stroop task were measured in two groups of participants: 14 participants who had experienced the great Sichuan earthquake (earthquake group) and 14 participants who did not experience the earthquake (control group). ERP data showed that negative words elicited a more negative P2 than positive words in the earthquake group. Moreover, negative words also elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N280-380 effect) than positive words in the earthquake group, while this effect was not found in the control group. We suggest that the N280-380 effect may reflect heightened emotional arousal to negative words due to personal experience of a traumatic event. Dipole analysis localized the N280-380 to the parahippocampal gyrus and the cuneus, which we suggest may be related to the automatic recollection of the traumatic experience.
authors: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
authors: D T
authors: DT
authors: Wei
authors: J
authors: J
authors: Qiu
authors: X
authors: X
authors: Du
authors: Y J
authors: YJ
authors: Luo
mesh_terms: D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D002681:China; D004190:Disasters; D055866:Earthquakes; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D057190:Stroop Test; D055815:Young Adult