Comparison of physiological responses to affect eliciting pictures and music

Recent investigations of the neural correlates of affect elicited from different modalities have found both modality-general and modality-specific representations (Chikazoe et al., 2014). The implications for how physiological responses to affect differ across stimulus modalities have not been fully investigated. This study examined similarities and differences between physiological signatures of affect derived from two different modes of presentation: visual pictures and auditory music sampled from an affective space defined by valence and arousal. Electromyography recordings for the zygomaticus major (EMGZ) and corrugator supercilii (EMGC) were measured along with heart rate and skin conductance level (SCL). Multidimensional scaling was used to visualize relationships from physiological and behavioral responses, and the observed relationships were statistically evaluated using multivariate and univariate analyses. Results for physiological measures demonstrated that valence was represented in the same general way across modalities, primarily reflected in EMGC responses. Arousal, however, was represented in a modality-specific manner, with SCL and EMGZ sensitive to music-based arousal but not picture-based arousal. Stimulus modality itself was predicted from EMGC. Thus, physiological responses to valence were similar across modalities but physiological responses to arousal differed across modalities. These results support the utility of testing for affective markers across modalities within the same experimental setting to reveal how physiological responses are linked to either affect, stimulus modality or both.