title: Negative mood state enhances the susceptibility to unpleasant events: neural correlates from a music-primed emotion classification task.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Various affective disorders are linked with enhanced processing of unpleasant stimuli. However, this link is likely a result of the dominant negative mood derived from the disorder, rather than a result of the disorder itself. Additionally, little is currently known about the influence of mood on the susceptibility to emotional events in healthy populations.
  
  
  METHODS
  Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded for pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures while subjects performed an emotional/neutral picture classification task during positive, neutral, or negative mood induced by instrumental Chinese music.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes were positively related to the affective arousal of pictures. The emotional responding to unpleasant pictures, indicated by the unpleasant-neutral differences in LPPs, was enhanced during negative compared to neutral and positive moods in the entire LPP time window (600-1000 ms). The magnitude of this enhancement was larger with increasing self-reported negative mood. In contrast, this responding was reduced during positive compared to neutral mood in the 800-1000 ms interval. Additionally, LPP reactions to pleasant stimuli were similar across positive, neutral and negative moods except those in the 800-900 ms interval.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Negative mood intensifies the humans' susceptibility to unpleasant events in healthy individuals. In contrast, music-induced happy mood is effective in reducing the susceptibility to these events. Practical implications of these findings were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Jiajin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China ; Research Center for Psychological Development and Education, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, Liaoning, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Jiemin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Chongqing Three-Gorges Normal School, Wanzhou, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Enxia
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ju
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Greg J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Norman
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Nanxiang
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ding
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult