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European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience

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01-03-2011 | Original Paper

Attention to emotion: auditory-evoked potentials in an emotional choice reaction task and personality traits as assessed by the NEO FFI

Authors: Verena Mittermeier, Gregor Leicht, Susanne Karch, Ulrich Hegerl, Hans-Jürgen Möller, Oliver Pogarell, Christoph Mulert

Published in: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience | Issue 2/2011

Abstract

Several studies suggest that attention to emotional content is related to specific changes in central information processing. In particular, event-related potential (ERP) studies focusing on emotion recognition in pictures and faces or word processing have pointed toward a distinct component of the visual-evoked potential, the EPN (‘early posterior negativity’), which has been shown to be related to attention to emotional content. In the present study, we were interested in the existence of a corresponding ERP component in the auditory modality and a possible relationship with the personality dimension extraversion–introversion, as assessed by the NEO Five-Factors Inventory. We investigated 29 healthy subjects using three types of auditory choice tasks: (1) the distinction of syllables with emotional intonation, (2) the identification of the emotional content of adjectives and (3) a purely cognitive control task. Compared with the cognitive control task, emotional paradigms using auditory stimuli evoked an EPN component with a distinct peak after 170 ms (EPN 170). Interestingly, subjects with high scores in the personality trait extraversion showed significantly higher EPN amplitudes for emotional paradigms (syllables and words) than introverted subjects.

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Title: Attention to emotion: auditory-evoked potentials in an emotional choice reaction task and personality traits as assessed by the NEO FFI
Authors: Verena Mittermeier
Gregor Leicht
Susanne Karch
Ulrich Hegerl
Hans-Jürgen Möller
Oliver Pogarell
Christoph Mulert
Publication date: 01-03-2011
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Published in: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience / Issue 2/2011
Print ISSN: 0940-1334
Electronic ISSN: 1433-8491
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-010-0127-9

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Attention to emotion: auditory-evoked potentials in an emotional choice reaction task and personality traits as assessed by the NEO FFI

Abstract

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