Mood Induced Changes in Global or Local Processing of Information Explained by Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine Patterns of Activity

Many studies have revealed mood induced changes in the cognitive processing of different tasks. Recent studies show that negative moods lead to a switch in the style of processing while positive moods lead to a continuation of the preferred style of processing. Two of the centers responsible for mood regulations also play a big role in modulating different patterns of locus coeruleus norepinephrine (LC-NE) release and decision making processes. Therefore, we expected to find mood induced changes in performance as well as changes in patterns of LC-NE release specific to each of the induced moods. Our task required our participants to look at congruent and incongruent Navon images and decide whether the bigger letter or the smaller ones were vowels or consonants. Depending on the group each participant was randomly assigned to, either mirth, elevation, sadness or neutral mood was induced in the second half of the experiment. Overall, we found that participants got faster in the task throughout the study. Although, across all of the induced mood categories our participants had a better performance at local blocks before and after mood induction, participants in the sadness condition had the least improvement in their performance on the global blocks. We also found mood induced patterns of NE release specific to each type of mood induction. Moreover, the post mood induction performance of participants on the task was in accordance with what would be expected of participants displaying that specific pattern of LC-NE release.