Blood pressure changes highlight gender differences in emotional reactivity to arousing pictures

The current study was aimed at investigating the effects of gender on the magnitude and patterning of blood pressure responses to specific pleasant and unpleasant, arousing visual stimuli. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), as well as heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SCR) responses were investigated during picture viewing in 21 female and 25 male students. The pattern of SCR and HR reactivity across emotional categories was found to be similar for men and women. Gender was found to be an effective moderator of BP responses specifically to sexual stimulus content, which prompted greater reactivity in men than in women. These findings extend prior research on gender differences in autonomic responding to emotional visual stimuli and suggest that BP changes might reflect sexual peripheral arousal more than other autonomic measures.     

Race and sex differences in cutaneous pain perception

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine race and sex differences in cutaneous pain perception. METHODS: Pain perception was measured using a suprathreshold evaluation of pain intensity and pain unpleasantness to a series of thermal stimuli in 27 whites (14 men and 13 women) and 24 African Americans (12 men and 12 women). Blood pressure, depressive symptoms, anxiety state levels, and negative mood were assessed before pain testing to examine whether they might account for any sex or race differences in pain perception that emerged. RESULTS: African Americans rated the stimuli as more unpleasant and showed a tendency to rate it as more intense than whites. Women showed a tendency to rate the stimuli as more unpleasant and more intense than men. In addition, systolic blood pressure was inversely related to pain intensity. After statistically adjusting for systolic blood pressure, sex differences in pain unpleasantness were reduced and sex differences in pain intensity were abolished; race differences were unaltered. CONCLUSIONS: These differences in pain perception may be associated with different pain mechanisms: in the ease of sex, differences in opioid activity and baroreceptor-regulated pain systems; in the case of race, unmeasured psychological characteristics are suggested by the larger differences in ratings of pain unpleasantness than pain intensity.     

From emotion perception to emotion experience: emotions evoked by pictures and classical music.

Most previous neurophysiological studies evoked emotions by presenting visual stimuli. Models of the emotion circuits in the brain have for the most part ignored emotions arising from musical stimuli. To our knowledge, this is the first emotion brain study which examined the influence of visual and musical stimuli on brain processing. Highly arousing pictures of the International Affective Picture System and classical musical excerpts were chosen to evoke the three basic emotions of happiness, sadness and fear. The emotional stimuli modalities were presented for 70 s either alone or combined (congruent) in a counterbalanced and random order. Electroencephalogram (EEG) Alpha-Power-Density, which is inversely related to neural electrical activity, in 30 scalp electrodes from 24 right-handed healthy female subjects, was recorded. In addition, heart rate (HR), skin conductance responses (SCR), respiration, temperature and psychometrical ratings were collected. Results showed that the experienced quality of the presented emotions was most accurate in the combined conditions, intermediate in the picture conditions and lowest in the sound conditions. Furthermore, both the psychometrical ratings and the physiological involvement measurements (SCR, HR, Respiration) were significantly increased in the combined and sound conditions compared to the picture conditions. Finally, repeated measures ANOVA revealed the largest Alpha-Power-Density for the sound conditions, intermediate for the picture conditions, and lowest for the combined conditions, indicating the strongest activation in the combined conditions in a distributed emotion and arousal network comprising frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital neural structures. Summing up, these findings demonstrate that music can markedly enhance the emotional experience evoked by affective pictures.     

Are Females More Responsive to Emotional Stimuli? A Neurophysiological Study Across Arousal and Valence Dimensions

Men and women seem to process emotions and react to them differently. Yet, few neurophysiological studies have systematically investigated gender differences in emotional processing. Here, we studied gender differences using Event Related Potentials (ERPs) and Skin Conductance Responses (SCR) recorded from participants who passively viewed emotional pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The arousal and valence dimension of the stimuli were manipulated orthogonally. The peak amplitude and peak latency of ERP components and SCR were analyzed separately, and the scalp topographies of significant ERP differences were documented. Females responded with enhanced negative components (N100 and N200), in comparison to males, especially to the unpleasant visual stimuli, whereas both genders responded faster to high arousing or unpleasant stimuli. Scalp topographies revealed more pronounced gender differences on central and left hemisphere areas. Our results suggest a difference in the way emotional stimuli are processed by genders: unpleasant and high arousing stimuli evoke greater ERP amplitudes in women relatively to men. It also seems that unpleasant or high arousing stimuli are temporally prioritized during visual processing by both genders.     

Sex differences in emotional memory consolidation: the effect of stress-induced salivary alpha-amylase and cortisol

This study examined sex differences in the emotional memory consolidation, and the impact of stress-induced cortisol and salivary alpha amylase responses on emotional memory recall. Following baseline salivary measures, 39 healthy women and 41 men viewed 20 neutral and 20 negative arousing images, and then underwent either a cold pressor stress test or control condition, followed by further salivary measures. Participants returned two days later for a free recall test. The stress condition induced greater cortisol response, and negative images were better recalled than neutral. Whereas women displayed greater recall of negative images under stress than men, they recalled fewer negative images in the control condition. Stress-induced cortisol predicted recall of negative images in women, and neutral images in men. This suggests there is an enhanced consolidation of negative images under stress in women that may be a potential mechanism for the greater female prevalence for developing anxiety disorders.     

Sex differences in finger temperature response to music.

A finding of significant sex differences in finger temperature responses to stimuli would have implications for a variety of situations in which finger temperature changes in combination with other psychophysiological measures are employed as indicators of psychological and/or physiological states. In the present study, each subject listened to one of two distinct musical selections for 3-minutes and 40-seconds after being allowed to adapt for one of five durations ranging from 4 to 20 minutes. Females' finger temperatures decreased more or increased less than did males' finger temperatures. This finding held no matter which music was played and was true for all but the shortest adaptation duration. Control data indicated that the sex difference would not have occurred in the absence of the music, and thus the results suggest that females' finger temperatures decrease more than males' only when stimulation occurs. Possible causes of the sex difference are discussed as well as possible implications for studies in which finger temperature is employed as a dependent variable.     

Watching emotional movies: Affective reactions and gender differences

Previous studies have found that unpleasant film clips depicting mutilated bodies or injuries evoke a sustained heart rate deceleration which has been interpreted as reflecting a stimulus-specific aversive response or as increased orienting and attentional processing that varies with stimulus significance. Few studies, however, have examined cardiac changes during the viewing of high arousal pleasant films. To clarify this issue, the present study assessed evaluative, facial and autonomic reactions in both men and women during the viewing of highly arousing pleasant, as well as unpleasant, films. Results indicated a similar skin conductance increase and heart rate deceleration which were greater than those observed during the viewing of a neutral film. Compared to men, women rated both films as less pleasant and rated the unpleasant film as more arousing. The present findings suggest that sustained exposure to pleasant and unpleasant stimuli elicit similar cardiac orienting when stimuli are equated for subjective report of emotional arousal.     

Men and women differ in amygdala response to visual sexual stimuli

Men are generally more interested in and responsive to visual sexually arousing stimuli than are women. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show that the amygdala and hypothalamus are more strongly activated in men than in women when viewing identical sexual stimuli. This was true even when women reported greater arousal. Sex differences were specific to the sexual nature of the stimuli, were restricted primarily to limbic regions, and were larger in the left amygdala than the right amygdala. Men and women showed similar activation patterns across multiple brain regions, including ventral striatal regions involved in reward. Our findings indicate that the amygdala mediates sex differences in responsiveness to appetitive and biologically salient stimuli; the human amygdala may also mediate the reportedly greater role of visual stimuli in male sexual behavior, paralleling prior animal findings.     

Affective and physiological responses to environmental noises and music.

Research suggests that respiratory patterns may reflect general dimensions of emotional response. In this study, we investigated the relationships between judgments of affective valence (pleasantness) and arousal and respiratory responses to acoustic stimuli. Sixteen environmental noises and 16 musical fragments of 30 s duration were presented to 31 participants, while respiration, skin conductance level and heart rate were recorded. Judgments of valence and arousal were registered using the 9-point Self-Assessment Manikin. For noises, breathing accelerated and minute ventilation augmented with decreases in pleasantness for low-arousal stimuli and with increases in arousal for positive stimuli. For music, breathing accelerated and minute ventilation augmented with increases both in rated valence and arousal. Skin conductance level increased with arousal ratings for music but not for noises, whereas mean heart rate increased with rated arousal for noises but not for music. Although both noises and music are sound-vibrations, differences in the relationships between affective judgments and physiological responses were found suggesting differences in the processing of the two types of acoustic stimuli.     

Neural response to emotional pictures is unaffected by concurrent task difficulty: an event-related potential study

The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential that is enhanced when viewing arousing (pleasant and unpleasant) pictures compared to neutral pictures. The affective modulation of the LPP is believed to reflect the increased attention to, and perceptual processing of, emotional stimuli. The present study examined whether concurrent task difficulty (performing mathematics) would modulate the LPP while participants viewed emotionally arousing stimuli. Results indicated that the LPP was larger following pleasant and unpleasant stimuli than it was following neutral stimuli; moreover, the magnitude of this increase was not influenced by concurrent task difficulty. This finding suggests that the affective modulation of neural activity during picture viewing is relatively automatic and is insusceptible to competing task demands. Results are further discussed in terms of the LPP's role in motivated attention and implications for research on emotion regulation.     

Affective modulation of eyeblink reactions to noxious sural nerve stimulation: a supraspinal measure of nociceptive reactivity?

Research suggests affective picture-viewing modulates subjective and physiological reactions to noxious stimulation (pain report, heart rate acceleration, skin conductance response, nociceptive flexion reflex). Because the nociceptive flexion reflex (a spinal reflex) is modulated by picture-viewing, this suggests affective processes are able to modulate afferent nociception at spinal levels. This highlights the importance of assessing nociceptive reactivity from physiological measures mediated at different levels of the neuraxis (spinal vs. supraspinal) to help elucidate the mechanisms associated with pain regulation. The present study examined whether affective pictures modulate eyeblink reactions (a supraspinal reflex) to noxious stimulation. Healthy men and women (N=23) were recruited from the psychology subject pool to participate. Pictures (attack, loss, neutral, food, erotica) that manipulated affective valence and arousal were presented and noxious electrodermal stimulations were delivered to the sural nerve. Picture duration (500-ms vs. 6-s) was also manipulated, balanced across picture content. Results suggested affective valence and arousal contributed to the modulation of eyeblinks. Eyeblinks were larger during highly arousing unpleasant pictures (attack) than highly arousing pleasant pictures (erotica), but low arousal pictures (loss, food) did not lead to significant modulation. Affective modulation was independent of picture duration or the perceived painfulness of noxious stimulation. This study suggests eyeblink reactions can serve as a supraspinal outcome in procedures used to study affective modulation of pain and nociception.     

Facial affect recognition moderates the relation between autonomic nervous system reactivity and aggression during dyadic conflict

Researchers examining physiological factors of emotion have identified differential patterns of physiological reactivity among intimate partner violence perpetrators during interpersonal conflict. Although it is unclear what mechanisms are influencing these distinct physiological patterns, research suggests that perpetrators’ ability to decode emotions may be involved. The current study examined how the relation between an individual's physiological reactivity and their aggression during conflict with an intimate partner is influenced by the affect they are exposed to and their affect recognition ability. Sixty-seven heterosexual couples completed self-report measures and participated in a conflict discussion while physiological measures were recorded. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) was indexed by Skin Conductance Level (SCL) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA). Aggressive affect was coded from video. Additionally, men were administered a facial affect recognition task. Results indicated that observed aggression during the conflict discussion was associated with RSA and SCL suppression, but only for men with moderate to high affect recognition ability. Additionally, the interaction effects between physiological reactivity and affect recognition on male aggression was conditional on their partner exhibiting at least moderate levels of aggressive affect. Findings from our study suggest that the relation between autonomic nervous system reactivity during conflict and aggression toward an intimate partner is conditional on men's ability to decode the facial affect of their partner. For individuals who were able to decode aggressive affect from their partner, aggression was associated with decreased parasympathetic and SNS activation.     

Electrodermal activity and temperament in preschool children

This study had two objectives: To examine poorly understood patterns of young children's electrodermal reactivity and to test the hypothesis that this reactivity reflects individual differences in the behavioral inhibition system (BIS). We recorded skin conductance responses (SCRs) from 92 4-year-old children during a laboratory session that encompassed physiological and psychological stimuli. Physiological stimuli (breaths), moderately loud to loud sounds (expected and unexpected) and, to a lesser extent, stimuli with psychological significance elicited clear SCRs. Induction of psychological conflict and exposure to emotional film clips for the most part did not elicit increases in skin conductance (SC). Children's temperament dimensions of fearfulness and effortful (or inhibitory) control--two components of the BIS--were assessed using robust observational batteries at age 2 and 4 years. The theoretically expected correlations between overall SC lability (reflecting SC levels) and both dimensions of temperament were significant, albeit modest and limited to the contemporaneous measures at age 4.     

Enhanced response to music in pregnancy

Given a possible effect of estrogen on the pleasure‐mediating dopaminergic system, musical appreciation in participants whose estrogen levels are naturally elevated during the oral contraceptive cycle and pregnancy has been investigated (n = 32, 15 pregnant, 17 nonpregnant; mean age 27.2). Results show more pronounced blood pressure responses to music in pregnant women. However, estrogen level differences during different phases of oral contraceptive intake did not have any effect, indicating that the observed changes were not related to estrogen. Effects of music on blood pressure were independent of valence, and dissonance elicited the greatest drop in blood pressure. Thus, the enhanced physiological response in pregnant women probably does not reflect a protective mechanism to avoid unpleasantness. Instead, this enhanced response is discussed in terms of a facilitation of prenatal conditioning to acoustical (musical) stimuli.     

Intact physiological response to arousal with impaired emotional recognition in alexithymia

BACKGROUND: The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between the recognition of emotion and physiological response to emotion (i.e. arousal) in alexithymia. METHODS: This study investigated differences in physiological arousal state, as measured by continuous heart rate, electrodermal activity (EDA) and self-reported emotional intensity before and after exposure to an emotionally arousing or neutral videotape among 41 high- or low-alexithymic young adult participants. RESULTS: Across subjects, emotionally negative stimuli produced increased physiological arousal. However, high-alexithymic participants exposed to the arousing videotape did not report increased subjective emotional intensity, as did low-alexithymic participants. In addition, the baseline EDA of high-alexithymic participants was significantly higher than that of the low-alexithymic participants. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the prediction that alexithymia leads to a decoupling between subjective and physiological arousal when exposed to emotionally negative stimuli. This decoupling may increase alexithymic individuals' risks for stress-related illness.     

Crossmodal transfer of emotion by music

Music is one of the most powerful elicitors of subjective emotion, yet it is not clear whether emotions elicited by music are similar to emotions elicited by visual stimuli. This leads to an open question: can music-elicited emotion be transferred to and/or influence subsequent vision-elicited emotional processing? Here we addressed this question by investigating processing of emotional faces (neutral, happy and sad) primed by short excerpts of musical stimuli (happy and sad). Our behavioural experiment showed a significant effect of musical priming: prior listening to a happy (sad) music enhanced the perceived happiness (sadness) of a face irrespective of facial emotion. Further, this musical priming-induced effect was largest for neutral face. Our electrophysiological experiment showed that such crossmodal priming effects were manifested by event related brain potential components at a very early (within 100 ms post-stimulus) stages of neuronal information processing. Altogether, these results offer new insight into the crossmodal nature of music and its ability to transfer emotion to visual modality.     

Affective modulation of eyeblink reactions to noxious sural nerve stimulation: A supraspinal measure of nociceptive reactivity?

Research suggests affective picture-viewing modulates subjective and physiological reactions to noxious stimulation (pain report, heart rate acceleration, skin conductance response, nociceptive flexion reflex). Because the nociceptive flexion reflex (a spinal reflex) is modulated by picture-viewing, this suggests affective processes are able to modulate afferent nociception at spinal levels. This highlights the importance of assessing nociceptive reactivity from physiological measures mediated at different levels of the neuraxis (spinal vs. supraspinal) to help elucidate the mechanisms associated with pain regulation. The present study examined whether affective pictures modulate eyeblink reactions (a supraspinal reflex) to noxious stimulation. Healthy men and women (N = 23) were recruited from the psychology subject pool to participate. Pictures (attack, loss, neutral, food, erotica) that manipulated affective valence and arousal were presented and noxious electrodermal stimulations were delivered to the sural nerve. Picture duration (500-ms vs. 6-s) was also manipulated, balanced across picture content. Results suggested affective valence and arousal contributed to the modulation of eyeblinks. Eyeblinks were larger during highly arousing unpleasant pictures (attack) than highly arousing pleasant pictures (erotica), but low arousal pictures (loss, food) did not lead to significant modulation. Affective modulation was independent of picture duration or the perceived painfulness of noxious stimulation. This study suggests eyeblink reactions can serve as a supraspinal outcome in procedures used to study affective modulation of pain and nociception.     

Psychological and physiological reactions to visual representations of war

This paper explores the immediate psychological and physiological effects of aversive visual stimuli, represented as pictures of war, in a balanced mixed design (n = 24). The moderating effects of individual differences in locus of control and sex were examined, along with those of a requirement to report on the stimuli presented. The results indicated a fractionation of the autonomic response with electrodermal measures (EDA) and salivary function showing a sympathetic type response to war slides whilst measures of cardiac activity (heart rate and heart rate variability) tended to show increased parasympathetic activity over the response to neutral slides. Psychological measures showed an increase in self-reported stress, higher disturbance ratings and unprompted reports of various coping strategies (postexperimental interviews) in response to war slides. Additionally, self reported arousal and EDA's proved sensitive to the report requirement and cardiac activity appeared to be tied to individual differences in terms of locus of control. Although the physiological results could be taken as congruent with Hare's (1972) suggestion that 'morbid curiosity' accompanies the viewing of aversive stimuli, psychological measures tended to disconfirm this interpretation. The situational determinants of the cardiac response are discussed as a solution to the paradoxical cardiac response elicited with aversive visual stimuli, along with individual styles of coping with aversive situations which may be reflected in individual's locus of control.     

Judgement of mood in music following right hemisphere damage.

Evidence on hemispheric specialization has implicated the right hemisphere as having a special role in the mediation of emotion. Since music is an area in which both cognitive and affective aspects of perception can be assessed, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of right hemisphere damage on perception of emotional meaning or mood in music. An initial pilot study was conducted to select music on which normal subjects were consistent in their judgement of musical mood. The musical stimuli consisted of extracts of classical piano music. The technique used as a measure of musical mood was the Semantic Differential. Tracks of music and adjectival scales were selected for the experimental study in which 15 right hemisphere lesioned patients and normal controls were compared in their response to music. The right hemisphere group demonstrated a characteristic response in their judgement of mood in music. The results are discussed in terms of the role of pitch in judgement of mood in music and in terms of the relationship between music and language.     

Sex differences in physiological and affective responses to stress in remitted depression

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with alterations in stress physiology. Severe melancholic depression is characterized by hypercortisolism, but community dwelling mildly depressed individuals and those with remitted MDD have shown reduced or normal reactivity to stress. There are also pronounced sex differences both in the incidence of MDD and in stress reactivity. To explore the relationships among depression history, sex differences, and stress, we examined stress reactivity in people with and without a history of MDD. Twenty-two participants with remitted MDD (12 men and 10 women) and 36 never depressed comparison participants (22 men and 14 women) participated in the study. Cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA) were sampled from saliva before, 10 min after, and 30 min after the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Participants filled out the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) before and after they underwent the TSST. Women with remitted MDD showed reduced cortisol response to the TSST compared with the never MDD women, while men with remitted MDD showed comparable cortisol reactivity to the never depressed men. The groups did not differ on sAA reactivity to stress. The remitted MDD group (overall and men and women separately) reported greater negative affect both before and after stress compared to the never depressed group. Women from both groups reported greater post-stress negative affect than men. In contrast, men from both groups reported higher positive affect before and after stress than women. Given that the sex difference findings were not dependent on depression history, self-reported affective differences in response to stress may predate depressive symptoms and contribute to sex differences in depression incidence.