title: Emotion perception and executive control interact in the salience network during emotionally charged working memory processing.
abstract: Processing of emotional stimuli can either hinder or facilitate ongoing working memory (WM); however, the neural basis of these effects remains largely unknown. Here we examined the neural mechanisms of these paradoxical effects by implementing a novel emotional WM task in an fMRI study. Twenty-five young healthy participants performed an N-back task with fearful and neutral faces as stimuli. Participants made more errors when performing 0-back task with fearful versus neutral faces, whereas they made fewer errors when performing 2-back task with fearful versus neutral faces. These emotional impairment and enhancement on behavioral performance paralleled significant interactions in distributed regions in the salience network including anterior insula (AI) and dorsal cingulate cortex (dACC), as well as in emotion perception network including amygdala and temporal-occipital association cortex (TOC). The dorsal AI (dAI) and dACC were more activated when comparing fearful with neutral faces in 0-back task. Contrarily, dAI showed reduced activation, while TOC and amygdala showed stronger responses to fearful as compared to neutral faces in the 2-back task. These findings provide direct neural evidence to the emerging dual competition model suggesting that the salience network plays a critical role in mediating interaction between emotion perception and executive control when facing ever-changing behavioral demands.
authors.affiliation: School of Education Science, Guizhou Normal University, Guzhou, People's Republic of China; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Department for Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Shaozheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Guillén
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fernández
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Floris
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Klumpers
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen
keywords: N-back; dorsal anterior insula; emotion perception network; executive control network; fearful faces