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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access first published online on May 12, 2006
This version published online on May 22, 2006
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhk024
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

Neural Correlates of Processing Valence and Arousal in Affective Words

P.A. Lewis 1 *, H.D. Critchley 2, P. Rotshtein 3, and R.J. Dolan 3

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK; School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
2 School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
3 Functional Imaging Laboratory, University College London, London, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
P.A. Lewis, E-mail: p.lewis{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk


  Abstract

Psychological frameworks conceptualize emotion along 2 dimensions, "valence" and "arousal." Arousal invokes a single axis of intensity increasing from neutral to maximally arousing. Valence can be described variously as a bipolar continuum, as independent positive and negative dimensions, or as hedonic value (distance from neutral). In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to characterize neural activity correlating with arousal and with distinct models of valence during presentation of affective word stimuli. Our results extend observations in the chemosensory domain suggesting a double dissociation in which subregions of orbitofrontal cortex process valence, whereas amygdala preferentially processes arousal. In addition, our data support the physiological validity of descriptions of valence along independent axes or as absolute distance from neutral but fail to support the validity of descriptions of valence along a bipolar continuum.

Keywords: amygdala; arousal; emotion; fMRI; orbitofrontal cortex; valence.
Figures 3 and 4 have been set in color.
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