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The Emotional Stroop Task: Assessing Cognitive Performance under Exposure to Emotional Content
Published on: June 29, 2016
Modulating the processing of emotional stimuli by cognitive demand
Tanja S Kellermann1, Melanie A Sternkopf, Frank Schneider
1Department of Psychiatry und Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Jülich/Aachen, Germany. ta.kellermann@fz-juelich.de
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|January 25, 2011
Summary
Cognitive demands reduce emotional responses in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex. Increased cognitive load, however, activates a frontoparietal network, suggesting resource reallocation during emotional processing.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Emotional and cognitive processes are deeply intertwined, influencing brain function and affective disorders.
- Understanding their neural interaction is key for treating conditions like borderline personality disorder using cognitive behavioral therapy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how cognitive demands modulate the implicit processing of emotional stimuli.
- To explore the neural mechanisms underlying this emotion-cognition interaction.
Main Methods:
- Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study.
- Participants performed a motor short-term memory task with varying cognitive load (easy vs. difficult sequences).
- Emotional and neutral stimuli (International Affective Picture System) were presented during the task.
Main Results:
- Increased cognitive demand significantly reduced neural responses to emotional stimuli in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex.
- Higher cognitive load led to increased activation in a widespread frontoparietal network.
- This suggests cognitive processing attenuates affective responses, possibly via resource reallocation.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive demands can specifically attenuate the processing of emotional stimuli.
- The frontoparietal network may play a crucial role in mediating this resource allocation between cognitive and emotional systems.
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