Correlation between efficiency of cognitive tasks solving under emotional impactand EEG bands power in calm wakefulness

The topicality of studying the emotional impact on cognitive processes has two aspects: fundamental and applied.The latter deals with a necessity of search for ways of information processing optimization in the world where the amount of informationseems to increase exponentially. One of the ways to solve the problem is to include not only the cognitive but also the emotionalsphere in the study process. The fundamental aspect is connected with variance of data on emotions role in efficiency of cognitive processes:the impact of the emotional factor had been ascertained but information about the character and direction of such an impact remainsambiguous. It is well-known that human response to the emotional impact of various signs can differ greatly. These differencescan be caused either by different emotional significance of every different stimulus for different people or different sensitivity of peopleto emotional impact of the same sign. There are many literature data devoted to the connection between EEG spectral characteristics andindividual sensitivity of humans to the emotional impact of a different sign. But cortex mechanisms of connections between differentaspects of activation and valence remain unclear. The aim of the present study was to detect the impact of different emotional stimuli(positive / negative, verbal / nonverbal) on thinking activity subject to different EEG bands power in the state of calm wakefulness.Right answers quantity changes were considered under different emotional impacts and these changes dependence of EEG bands powerin the state of calm wakefulness. The study of correlations between the impact of different emotional stimuli (emotional (positive andnegative) words and images) on the efficiency of cognitive tasks solving (retrieval of information consolidated in long-term memory andthinking tasks) and EEG different bands power was performed. A significant increase of right answers quantity as a result of memorytasks solving under emotional stimuli was detected. An interconnection between the efficiency of cognitive tasks solving and differentEEG bands power was found. The results described in the paper showed a significant increase of right answers quantity during memorytasks under negative images presentation. The influence of negative images on thinking tasks results efficiency and memory tasks efficiencydiffers significantly. Significant differences for the influence of verbal stimuli on memory tasks results were found. Positive emotionscause an increase in the right results quantity. It was shown that EEG delta power positively correlates with right answers quantitychanges both for thinking and memory tasks under positive verbal stimuli. Direct interconnection of right answers quantity changes onpositive images and EEG power in theta, alpha and beta spectral bands during solving thinking tasks and beta, gamma1, gamma2 andgamma3 when solving memory tasks.

Keywords

Authors

References