Emotion affects prefrontal cortex activity during cognitive task performance: A change blindness functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Bendall, RCA; Thompson, C

Abstract

Research is increasingly demonstrating that emotional processes interact with our cognitions and that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is heavily involved during such
tasks. Higher naturalistic negative mood is related to reduced PFC activity during working memory tasks (Aoki et al., 2011). In addition increases in PFC activity
have been observed when attending to visual art of positive valence (Kreplin & Fairclough, 2013). How emotion influences attentional processes and what the
underlying role of the PFC is during attentional tasks warrants investigation. This study aimed to investigate if changes in PFC activity were evident during a change
detection flicker task (e.g. Rensink, O’Regan, & Clark, 1997) following induction of positive, negative as well as neutral affect. The Positive and Negative Affect
Scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegan) was employed to collect self-reported emotional affect. The study also sought to examine if there were any behavioural
improvements in visual attention following induction of positive affect.

Citation

Bendall, R., & Thompson, C. (2014, September). Emotion affects prefrontal cortex activity during cognitive task performance: A change blindness functional near-infrared spectroscopy study. Poster presented at British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience Annual Scientific Meeting, York

• Presentation Conference Type: Poster
• Conference Name: British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience Annual Scientific Meeting
• Conference Location: York
• Start Date: Sep 11, 2014
• End Date: Sep 12, 2014
• Deposit Date: Apr 2, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 2, 2015
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference