title: Affective motivational direction drives asymmetric frontal hemisphere activation.
abstract: Decades of research have shown that the left- and right-frontal cortical regions are asymmetrically involved in affective processing. Specifically, this past work has demonstrated that greater left-frontal activation is related to positive-approach, and greater right-frontal activation is related to negative-withdrawal. However, much of this past work confounded motivation and affective valence. The current experiment sought to illuminate whether frontal asymmetry is related to motivation or affective valence by examining frontal-lateralized late positive potentials (f-LPPs) and frontal cortical alpha power activation to approach-positive, approach-negative, and withdrawal-negative affects in the same participants. Results revealed that f-LPPs to approach-positive and approach-negative pictures were larger in left- (vs. right-) frontal regions, whereas f-LPPs to withdrawal-negative pictures did not differ between frontal regions. In addition, midline LPPs to approach-positive and approach-negative pictures related to greater left-frontal cortical activation. Together, these results suggest that greater relative left-frontal activation is associated with positive and negative approach-motivated states in the same participants. More broadly, these results are consistent with conceptual models that asymmetric hemisphere activation is related to motivational direction, rather than affective valence.
authors.forename: Bryan D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Poole
authors.forename: Philip A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Gable
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D055815:Young Adult