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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 18, 2026

The Emotional Stroop Task: Assessing Cognitive Performance under Exposure to Emotional Content

The Emotional Stroop Task: Assessing Cognitive Performance under Exposure to Emotional Content

Published on: June 29, 2016

The impact of processing load on emotion.

D G V Mitchell¹, M Nakic, D Fridberg

¹Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, USA. dmitch8@uwo.ca

|December 13, 2006

Summary

Processing load affects brain responses to emotional faces, with higher loads reducing amygdala activity. This suggests cognitive control modulates emotional information processing.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Background:

Emotional expressions are crucial for social interaction.
Understanding how cognitive processes modulate emotional responses is key to cognitive neuroscience.
Previous research suggests top-down control influences emotional perception.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of varying processing loads on brain activity related to emotional expressions.
To examine how cognitive tasks influence the neural response to emotional faces.
To explore the role of top-down control in modulating emotional information processing.

Main Methods:

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed.
Participants viewed composite stimuli of neutral and fearful faces with superimposed words.
Three tasks with increasing processing loads were used: gender discrimination (face-based), case judgment (word-based), and syllable count (word-based).

Main Results:

Significant main effects of processing load were observed in prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, visual areas, and the amygdala.
Amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex activity, heightened during face-based tasks, decreased during word-based tasks.
Connectivity analysis revealed an inverse relationship between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity.

Conclusions:

Processing load significantly impacts neural responses to emotional stimuli, even when stimulus features are controlled.
Cognitive tasks, particularly linguistic ones, can reduce the brain's response to task-irrelevant emotional information.
Emotional information processing is subject to top-down cognitive control, modulated by processing demands.