title: Novelty and emotion: Pupillary and cortical responses during viewing of natural scenes.
abstract: Given the remarkable similarities in the antecedent conditions-stimulus motivational relevance and novelty (i.e., probability of occurrence)-that elicit amplitude modulation of the late positive potential (LPP) and the pupillary dilation response, the present study examines whether these two indexes of orienting response reflect common processes that are responsible for modulatory patterns in motivationally relevant contexts. In the present study, the LPP and the pupillary dilation response were co-registered in a free-picture viewing context in which stimulus novelty was manipulated through repeated presentation of the same picture exemplar. More specifically, pictures depicting both emotional and neutral contents could be novel, that is never seen before in the course of the study, or repeated 4-8 times in a row (i.e., massed repetition). Results showed that, despite massed repetitions, the late positive potential amplitude continued to be highly modulated by picture content, whereas affective modulation of pupil dilation decreased with picture repetition. These findings indicate that, although the LPP and pupil dilation are similarly affected by motivational relevance during the viewing of novel pictures, they differ when pictures are highly familiar, possibly reflecting different functional meanings in the context of the orienting response.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Italy. Electronic address: vera.ferrari@unipr.it.
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ferrari
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: De Cesarei
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Serena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mastria
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lugli
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Baroni
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nicoletti
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Codispoti
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011680:Pupil / Q000502:physiology*; D012025:Reflex, Pupillary / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion; Late positive potential; Pupil response; Repetition