Fruhholz, S. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2024

Emotion induction modulates neural dynamics during ideational originality

Emotions remarkably impact our creative minds; nevertheless, a comprehensive mapping of their underlying neural mechanisms remains elusive. Therefore, we explored the influence of induced emotional states on ideational originality and its associated neural dynamics. Participants were randomly presented with three short videos with sad, neutral, and happy content. After each video, ideational originality was evaluated using the alternate uses task (AUT). Ideational originality was significantly higher after induction of the happy state than the neutral state; in contrast, there was a nonsignificant difference between the sad and neutral states. Associated neural dynamics were assessed through EEG time-frequency (TF) power and phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) analysis. Our findings suggest that emotional states elicit distinct TF and PAC profiles associated with ideational originality. Relative to baseline, gamma activity was enhanced after the neutral induction and more enhanced after the induction of a happy state but reduced after the induction of a sad state in 2-4 seconds after starting the task. Our PAC findings suggest that the attention system may be silent after the induction of a happy emotional state to load rich materials into working memory (WM) and active in the sad state to maintain these materials in WM. HighlightO_LIIdeational originality was significantly higher after the induction of a happy state than in a neutral state. C_LIO_LIEmotional states elicited distinct EEG time-frequency and phase-amplitude coupling profiles associated with ideational originality. C_LIO_LIRelative to baseline, gamma activity was enhanced in the neutral state and more robust in a happy state but reduced in a sad state 2-4 seconds after starting AUT. C_LIO_LIEnhancing ideational originality requires the induction of emotional states to suppress overlearned associations and strengthen weaker coupling associations, which is the case after the induction of a happy emotional state. C_LI

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Disrupting inferior frontal cortex activity alters affect decoding efficiency from clear but not from ambiguous affective speech

The evaluation of socio-affective sound information is accomplished by the primate auditory cortex in collaboration with limbic and inferior frontal cortex (IFC)--often observed during affective voice classification. Partly opposing views have been proposed, with IFC either coding cognitive processing challenges in case of sensory ambiguity or representing categorical object and affect information for clear voices. Here, we presented clear and ambiguous affective speech to two groups of human participants during neuroimaging, while in one group we inhibited right IFC activity with transcranial magnetic stimulation. IFC activity inhibition led to faster affective decisions, more accurate choice probabilities, reduced auditory cortical activity and increased fronto-limbic connectivity for clear affective speech. This indicates a more intermediate functional property of the IFC than assumed--namely with normal activity representing a more deliberate form of affective sound processing (i.e., enforcing cognitive analysis) that flags categorical sound decisions with precaution (i.e., representation of categorical uncertainty). TeaserInferior frontal cortex enforces cognitive analyses during affect decisions with different levels of sensory ambiguity.

neuroscience↗