Relative left frontal activation to appetitive stimuli: considering the role of individual differences

Experiments examining asymmetrical frontal activity in response to affective pictures have produced inconsistent results. These inconsistencies may have occurred because the pictorial stimuli may not have evoked strong emotional or motivational tendencies for all individuals. In the current study, participants were asked to indicate their liking for dessert and the time since they had last eaten to assess individual differences in emotion and motivation. Then, they were shown dessert pictures or neutral pictures while EEG activity was recorded. Results indicated that the individual differences predicted greater left than right frontal activity (inverse of the alpha power) within the first second as well as all 12 s of viewing of the dessert pictures.