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The motivated attention network is believed to be the system that allocates attention toward motivationally relevant, emotional stimuli in order to better prepare an organism for action [Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1997). Motivated attention: Affect, activation, and action. In P. J. Lang, R. F. Simons, M. Balaban, & R. Simons (Eds.),Attention and orienting: Sensory and motivational processes(pp. 97–135). Psychology Press]. The late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential (ERP) that is a manifestation of the motivated attention network, has not been found to reliably differentiate the valence of emotionally relevant stimuli. In two studies, we systematically varied epoch, stimulus arousal, stimulus valence, and hemisphere of presentation (Study 2) to investigate valence effects in the LPP. Both central and divided visual field presentations of emotional stimuli found the LPP to be sustained in later windows for high-arousing unpleasant images compared to pleasant images. Further, this effect was driven by sustained LPP responses following left hemisphere presentations of unpleasant stimuli compared to right. Findings are discussed regarding hemispheric processing of emotion and how lateralized emotion processes might contribute to psychopathology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Music is a strong emotional stimulus; however, it is difficult to differentiate the effects of arousal and valence. While emotional stimuli sets have been created from words and pictures, a normed set of musical stimuli is unavailable. The goal of this project was to identify a set of ecologically valid musical stimuli for use in research studies of emotion and mood that differ on valence but are matched for arousal, and are also matched with emotionally evocative non-musical stimuli. Three rating experiments were conducted. In the first Stimulus Selection experiment, participants rated short music clips for valence and arousal, and the most evocative clips were selected. In two follow-up Stimulus Validation experiments, two additional groups of participants rated the selected musical and non-musical stimuli, with Experiment 3 confirming that these stimuli work effectively in a noisy environment (within an MRI scanner). The result of these three studies is a set of emotionally evocative, positive and negative musical stimuli, matched for valence and arousal with a subset of previously validated non-musical stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To examine how unipolar depression influences hemispheric processing of emotional stimuli, words with clear affective content were assessed by depressed, remitted depressed, and never depressed participants. Semantic stimuli were selected for both their valence (positive vs. negative) and for their ability to engender affective arousal (high vs. low). After completing a structured clinical interview to determine depression experience, participants were asked to make valence judgements for laterally presented emotional words. Study results suggest that the right hemisphere (RH) is particularly sensitive to the affective semantic content of emotional stimuli, furthermore, two interesting higher order interactions were observed in the RH. First, in a replication of recent findings by Atchley et al. [2003. Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of emotional content in word meanings: The effect of current and past depression. Brain and Language, 84, 105–119], individuals who have experienced depression (both currently depressed and remitted depressed groups) show an advantage when processing negatively valent words, while the never depressed individuals show an advantage for positive words. Also in the RH, affective arousal interacted with stimulus valence (but not diagnostic group), such that all participants exhibited an advantage when categorizing highly arousing negative information, while for positive words the low arousing stimuli were identified more accurately. These results are discussed in the context of models of depressive cognition and in regards to general models of hemispheric specialization for emotion processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The current research examined how individuals with depression process emotional, self‐relevant stimuli. Across two studies, individuals with depression and healthy controls read stimuli that varied in self‐relevance while EEG data were recorded. We examined the late positive potential (LPP), an ERP component that captures the dynamic allocation of attention to motivationally salient stimuli. In Study 1, participants read single words in a passive‐viewing task. Participants viewed negative, positive, or neutral words that were either normative or self‐generated. Exploratory analyses indicated that participants with depression exhibited affective modulation of the LPP for self‐generated stimuli only (both positive and negative) and not for normative stimuli; healthy controls exhibited similar affective modulation of the LPP for both self‐relevant and normative stimuli. In Study 2, using a separate sample and a different task, stimuli were provided within the context of sentence stems referring to the self or other people. Participants with depression were more likely to endorse negative self‐referent sentences and reject positive ones compared to healthy controls. Depressed participants also exhibited an increased LPP to negative stimuli compared to positive or neutral stimuli. Together, these two studies suggest that depression is characterized by relatively increased sensitivity to affective self‐relevant stimuli, perhaps in the context of a broader reduction in emotional reactivity to stimuli that are not self‐relevant. Thus, depression may be characterized by a more nuanced pattern based on the degree of stimulus self‐relevance than either a global decrease or increase in reactivity to affective stimuli. We provide evidence that individuals with major depressive disorder focus on emotional stimuli related to themselves, rather than general emotional stimuli. In one study, depressed adults showed greater neural activation to emotional words that were self‐generated, but not neutral self‐generated words. In a second study, depressed individuals generated greater neural activation to negative sentences about the self, but not to positive statements about the self or neutral statements about others. Age‐matched, healthy controls did not show these biases. Together, these studies suggest that those with depression may exhibit selective biases to words that are both emotional and self‐related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent meta analyses suggest there is a common brain network involved in processing emotion in music and sounds. However, no studies have directly compared the neural substrates of equivalent emotional Western classical music and emotional environmental sounds. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we investigated whether brain activation in motor cortex, interoceptive cortex, and Broca's language area during an auditory emotional appraisal task differed as a function of stimulus type. Activation was relatively greater to music in motor and interoceptive cortex - areas associated with movement and internal physical feelings - and relatively greater to emotional environmental sounds in Broca's area. We conclude that emotional environmental sounds are appraised through verbal identification of the source, and that emotional Western classical music is appraised through evaluation of bodily feelings. While there is clearly a common core emotion-processing network underlying all emotional appraisal, modality-specific contextual information may be important for understanding the contribution of voluntary versus automatic appraisal mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]