On the influence of negative affect on the neural mechanisms of cognitive control: an event-related fMRI study

This fMRI study sought to elucidate the influence of negative affect on the neural mechanisms that underlie the processing of two basic kinds of cognitive interference: Stroop-interference and oddball-interference. 14 healthy subjects performed a color-word Stroop task that included congruent and incongruent Stroop trials as well as 'oddball' trials during which rarely occurring non-color words were presented. At the beginning of each trial a photograph of the International Affective Pictures System was presented to create a negative-arousal and a neutral (baseline) emotional condition. In the RT data, both Stroop-interference and oddball-interference was increased after negative emotion induction. The pictures of the negative-arousal condition themselves produced significantly enhanced activation in brain regions of the visual and the limbic system (e.g. amygdala, OFC), indicating that the intended emotion induction was effective. During the cognitive task, activations due to Stroop and oddball interference were enhanced by the preceding negative-arousal stimulus, and additional activations were observed in the extrastriate visual cortex, the IFJ, as well as specifically for oddball interference the TPJ, and specifically for Stroop-interference the ACC, DLPFC, and IPC. Taken together, we found an interaction between emotional and cognitive condition in terms of increased behavioral interference and increased interference-related activation under negative affect.