Emotionally evoked changes in cerebral hemodynamics measured by transcranial Doppler sonography

The cerebral representation of emotions has previously been investigated by the study of patients with local brain damage, experiments with selective stimulation of only one hemisphere, and more recently by imaging techniques such as positron-emission tomography or magnetic resonance imaging measuri ng local cerebral blood flow. We investigated the mean flow velocity (FVmea n) in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) by transcranial Doppler sonography d uring emotional stimulation with video scenes in 24 healthy test persons. T he videos consisted of an erotic scene and a violent scene shown in contras t to a calming scene. Blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing frequency w ere monitored continuously by noninvasive measurement. FVmean increased dur ing the erotic scene to 108.5 +/- 11.9% (P < 0.05) of the baseline value in the right MCA and to 109.0 +/- 10.6% (n.s.) in the left MCA. During the vi olent scene FVmean reached 109.0 +/- 8.7% (P < 0.05) on the right side and 108.1 +/- 13.0% (n.s.) on the left side. The FVmean time course showed a cl ose relationship to the video sequence. During scenes involving great tensi on FVmean showed a plateaulike state and peaked during sudden actions. Bloo d pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate showed no significant changes. However, we observed a tendency towards lower heart rates (lowest value 94 .5 +/- 13.6%) during the erotic scene and two peaks (103.2 +/- 13.3%, 104.8 +/- 16.8%) coinciding with sudden violent actions. The significant increas e in FVmean in the right MCA supports the theory of a right hemisphere domi nance for the processing of emotions.