ArticlePloS one2013
The effect of emotional content on brain activation and the late positive potential in a word n-back task.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The impact of affective information on working memory: A pair of meta-analytic reviews of behavioral and neuroimaging evidence.Psychological bulletin · 2019Pooled it
- How Emotions Influence Cognitive Control: A Within-Subject Investigation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Effects of startle on cognitive performance and physiological activity revealed by fNIRS and thermal imaging.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Exploring the n-back task: insights, applications, and future directions.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- The impact of stimulus format and presentation order on social working memory updating.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural Responses to a Working Memory Task in Acute Depressed and Remitted Phases in Bipolar Patients.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Changes in task performance and frontal cortex activation within and over sessions during the n-back task.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Self-referential Processing in Remitted Depression: An Event-Related Potential Study.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- The influence of stimuli valence, extraversion, and emotion regulation on visual search within real-world scenes.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- What emotion dimensions can affect working memory performance in healthy adults? A review.World journal of clinical cases · 2022Review
- Functional near-infrared spectroscopy as a potential objective evaluation technique in neurocognitive disorders after traumatic brain injury.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Internalising and externalising in early adolescence predict later executive function, not the other way around: a cross-lagged panel analysis.Cognition & emotion · 2021Article
- Working memory load reduces the electrocortical processing of positive pictures.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- Personality Traits Modulate the Impact of Emotional Stimuli During a Working Memory Task: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2020Article
- Joint Modulation of Facial Expression Processing by Contextual Congruency and Task Demands.Brain sciences · 2019Article
- How Does Allocation of Emotional Stimuli Impact Working Memory Tasks? An Overview.Advances in cognitive psychology · 2019Article
- Preserved Proactive Control in Ageing: A Stroop Study With Emotional Faces vs. Words.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Electroencephalography Based Analysis of Working Memory Load and Affective Valence in an N-back Task with Emotional Stimuli.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2017Article
- When Emotions Matter: Focusing on Emotion Improves Working Memory Updating in Older Adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Reporting and Interpreting Working Memory Performance inFrontiers in psychology · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThere is mounting evidence for the influence of emotional content on working memory performance. This is particularly important in light of the emotion processing that needs to take place when emotional content interferes with executive functions. In this study, we used emotional words of different valence but with similar arousal levels in an n-back task.
methodsWe examined the effects on activation in the prefrontal cortex by means of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and on the late positive potential (LPP). FNIRS and LPP data were examined in 30 healthy subjects.
resultsBEHAVIORAL RESULTS SHOW AN INFLUENCE OF VALENCE ON THE ERROR RATE DEPENDING ON THE DIFFICULTY OF THE TASK: more errors were made when the valence was negative and the task difficult. Brain activation was dependent both on the difficulty of the task and on the valence: negative valence of a word diminished the increase in activation, whereas positive valence did not influence the increase in activation, while difficulty levels increased. The LPP also differentiated between the different valences, and in addition was influenced by the task difficulty, the more difficult the task, the less differentiation could be observed.
conclusionsSummarized, this study shows the influence of valence on a verbal working memory task. When a word contained a negative valence, the emotional content seemed to take precedence in contrast to words containing a positive valence. Working memory and emotion processing sites seemed to overlap and compete for resources even when words are carriers of the emotional content.
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