Affective modulation of cognitive control: A systematic review of EEG studies

Abstract

In recent years, a growing corpus of research has been conducted utilizing a variety of behavioral and neurophysiological methodologies to investigate the relationship of emotion and cognition, yielding unique insights into fundamental concerns about the human mind and mental disease. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been utilized to investigate how emotional states alter neural markers of cognitive control. The current study is a systematic analysis of EEG research that looks at affective modulation (mood, emotion) of cognitive control and its many sub-processes (e.g., cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory). The PRISMA standards were followed in this review, which looked at experimental designs and tasks, as well as methodological elements of EEG recording and analysis across research. A total of 35 articles were chosen for qualitative synthesis as a consequence of the search. The examination of event-related potentials (ERPs), which showed affective modulation of 19 different components, was the most common electrophysiological approach used across research. The majority of the investigations focused on N2 and P3, indicating that affective induction has a strong influence on attentional processes and response inhibition. Future research should look into different methodologies such as source location and connection metrics to better understand the brain's areas and dynamic response during affective induction activities. It is also suggested that the technical components of the report be more explicit in order to promote study comparability and replication.

Keywords: Affective modulation; Cognitive control; EEG, ERP; Emotion; Response inhibition.