| Abstract No.: | C-G3196 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | NEURAL SYSTEMS RECRUITED FOR REASONING ABOUT NEUTRAL MATERIAL ARE
NOT AFFECTED BY MOOD MANIPULATION
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 3 Kathleen W. Smith*; 3 Vinod Goel; 2 Laura-Lee Balkwill; 1 Oshin Vartanian;
1 Department of National Defence, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2 Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada; 3 York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
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| Content: | Objective: To explore the relation between emotion and reason, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Goel and Dolan (2003) provided evidence for a model of separate but parallel and interacting systems for emotional reasoning and non-emotional reasoning. In that study, participants (Ps) engaged in reasoning about arguments with provocative or neutral content. Post-scan ratings of the emotionality of the arguments were found to be positively linearly related to increased neural activation (actually smaller deactivation) in the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) during emotional reasoning, and, conversely, to be negatively linearly related to increased neural activation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during non-emotional reasoning.
Materials and methods: We assessed whether reasoning is affected by mood in two studies. In the first study, Ps viewed positive, negative, and neutral pictures from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS). Each picture was followed by a syllogism with neutral content. On each trial, Ps rated the valence and intensity of the picture and then indicated whether the syllogism was logically valid or invalid. In the second study, Ps listened to neutral syllogisms delivered in sad, angry, or neutral tone of voice (ToV) and indicated whether the syllogism was logically valid or invalid. Thus, mood is manipulated visually and independently of the reasoning material in the first study but aurally and concurrently in the second study.
Results: In the IAPS study, neural activation associated with reasoning was found mainly in occipital regions whereas in the ToV study, such neural activation was found in caudate and parahippocampal gyrus. In both studies, neural activation associated with reasoning in the 'neutral mood' trials was not different from that in 'emotional mood' trials. In the IAPS study, neural activation associated with increasingly positive picture ratings was found in right medial frontal cortex, specifically in Brodmann area (BA) 10 as well as in occipital regions. Increasingly negative intensity was associated with activation in parahippocampal gyrus bilaterally, left medial temporal gyrus, right fusiform, and occipital regions. In the ToV study, listening to 'sad' versus 'angry' tone elicited activation in left medial prefrontal cortex, BA 11 and 10, in right BA 10, and in right superior frontal BA 8 and 6. Listening to 'angry' versus 'sad' elicited activation in superior temporal gyrus bilaterally as well as in a fronto-parietal network. It should be noted that mean decibel levels for each brain scan were controlled for in the analysis of the ToV study, to ensure that results were not the result of a confound.
Conclusion: Neural activation during the reasoning process was apparently not affected by the mood manipulation in either study. However, it does seem to have been affected by the visual or aural presentation of the material. Moreover, different emotions activated different systems in the brain.
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