MODULATION OF HUMAN AUDITORY INFORMATION-PROCESSING BY EMOTIONAL VISUAL-STIMULI

Auditory event-related potentials mismatch negativity (MMN) and N100 w ere recorded from seven subjects while they read text and watched emot ionally negative, neutral, and positive pictures varying in valence an d arousal. The MMN reflects automatic detection of change in auditory stimulus stream. Functionally different N100 is triggered by onset of various auditory stimuli. The N100 was stabile during all visual condi tions. The MMN was very similar during text reading, and neutral and n egative slide viewing, but was significantly attenuated during viewing of positively valenced slides. We suggest that visual emotional infor mation of high positive valence and low arousal is a signal of nonthre atening and nonappetitive environment. This kind of environment probab ly reduces the need for auditory change detection. (C) 1998 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.