EMOTIONAL INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND VISUAL-EVOKED BRAIN POTENTIALS

Visual evoked potentials to emotional slides presented for 2 sec. were investigated in 13 subjects. 73 emotional slides (pleasant, unpleasan t, and neutral) were selected from a standardized set of photographic slides, the 1988 International Affective Picture System of Lang, Ohman , and Vaitl. Visual evoked potentials were recorded from three head lo cations, frontal, central and parietal (Fz, Cz, and Pt). Analyses were performed in the two latency ranges: 300-400 msec. and 300-500 msec. Analyses showed. an arousal effect, as indicated by a quadratic trend, indicating that emotional slides (both pleasant and unpleasant) gave higher cortical positivity than neutral ones, for all components. In a ddition, in the two latency epochs, larger positivities were found al Pt, compared to Fz and Cz, whereas Fz and Ct did not differ from each other.