title: How 'love' and 'hate' differ from 'sleep': using combined electro/magnetoencephalographic data to reveal the sources of early cortical responses to emotional words.
abstract: Emotional words--as symbols for biologically relevant concepts--are preferentially processed in brain regions including the visual cortex, frontal and parietal regions, and a corticolimbic circuit including the amygdala. Some of the brain structures found in functional magnetic resonance imaging are not readily apparent in electro- and magnetoencephalographic (EEG; MEG) measures. By means of a combined EEG/MEG source localization procedure to fully exploit the available information, we sought to reduce these discrepancies and gain a better understanding of spatiotemporal brain dynamics underlying emotional-word processing. Eighteen participants read high-arousing positive and negative, and low-arousing neutral nouns, while EEG and MEG were recorded simultaneously. Combined current-density reconstructions (L2-minimum norm least squares) for two early emotion-sensitive time intervals, the P1 (80-120 ms) and the early posterior negativity (EPN, 200-300 ms), were computed using realistic individual head models with a cortical constraint. The P1 time window uncovered an emotion effect peaking in the left middle temporal gyrus. In the EPN time window, processing of emotional words was associated with enhanced activity encompassing parietal and occipital areas, and posterior limbic structures. We suggest that lexical access, being underway within 100 ms, is speeded and/or favored for emotional words, possibly on the basis of an "emotional tagging" of the word form during acquisition. This gives rise to their differential processing in the EPN time window. The EPN, as an index of natural selective attention, appears to reflect an elaborate interplay of distributed structures, related to cognitive functions, such as memory, attention, and evaluation of emotional stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Muenster, D-48149 Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, D-48149 Muenster, Germany.
authors.forename: Kati
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Keuper
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zwanzger
authors.forename: Marisa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nordt
authors.forename: Annuschka
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Eden
authors.forename: Inga
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Laeger
authors.forename: Pienie
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zwitserlood
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kissler
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Junghöfer
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dobel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D015225:Magnetoencephalography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: EEG; EPN; MEG; P1; arousal; emotion; source reconstruction; words