Many affective stimuli are hedonically complex mixtures containing both pleasant and unpleasant components. To investigate whether the brain represents the overall affective value of such complex stimuli, or the affective value of the different components simultaneously, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activations to a pleasant odor (jasmine), an unpleasant odor (...

Functional MRI (fMRI) was used to examine the relationship between processing of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli and activity in prefrontal cortex. Twenty volunteers identified the colors in which pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant words were printed. Pleasant words prompted more activity bilaterally in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) than did unpleasant words. In addition, pleasant words...

This article describes pleasant IAPS pictures that elicit low-arousal rather than the high-arousal physiological responses previously reported in the literature. Thirty-two International Affective Picture System (IAPS) photographs were grouped into 4 sets of 8 photographs: highly pleasant-arousing (sexual content and adventures), highly pleasant-relaxing pictures (landscapes, flowers or babies)...

The cortical areas that represent affectively positive and negative aspects of touch were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) by comparing activations produced by pleasant touch, painful touch produced by a stylus, and neutral touch, to the left hand. It was found that regions of the orbitofrontal cortex were activated more by pleasant touch and by painful stimuli th...

The purpose of this study was to identify subgroups of university students with the highest likelihood of remaining at elevated levels of depressive symptoms six months following the receipt of a depressive prevention intervention on the basis of known risk factors and participation in one of two depression prevention programs. Data from a randomized controlled trial evaluating depression preve...

We investigated to what extent emotional connotation influences cortical potentials during reading. To this end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during reading of high arousal pleasant and unpleasant and low arousal neutral adjectives that were presented at rates of 1 Hz and 3 Hz. Enhanced processing of both pleasant and unpleasant emotional compared to neutral adjectives was firs...