The impact of emotion on respiratory-related evoked potentials

Abstract

Emotion influences the perception of respiratory sensations, although the specific mechanism underlying this modulation is not yet clear. We examined the impact of viewing pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant affective pictures on the respiratory-related evoked potential (RREP) elicited by a short inspiratory occlusion in healthy volunteers. Reduced P3 amplitude of the RREP was found for respiratory probes presented when viewing pleasant or unpleasant series, when compared to those presented during the neutral series. Earlier RREP components, such as Nf, P1, N1, and P2, showed no modulation by emotion. The results suggest that emotion impacts the perception of respiratory sensations by reducing the attentional resources available for processing afferent respiratory sensory signals.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of the experimental set-up. The graphs superimposed on the head demonstrate the group mean scalp topography of the respiratory-related evoked potential averaged across all picture series according to standard sensor placements of the International 10/20 System.

Figure 2

Mean ratings of hedonic valence (left upper panel), arousal (right upper panel), intensity of respiratory occlusion (right lower panel) and mean skin conductance responses (left lower panel) during pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant affective picture series. Error bars represent standard deviations of the mean. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Figure 3

Group mean respiratory-related evoked potential over the left hemispheric centro-parietal region elicited by inspiratory occlusions during pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant affective picture series. In addition, the group mean scalp topography for the P3 is shown, averaged across the pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant series.