Event-related beta oscillations are affected by emotional eliciting stimuli

According to previous results, negative emotional facial expressions elicit oscillatory beta responses. The present study analyzes event-related beta oscillations upon presentation of International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and aims to show whether behavior of beta in response to negative IAPS pictures also have similar dynamics. IAPS pictures (unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral) were presented as a block and random passive viewing to 14 healthy subjects (8 male). Only with pictures with similar luminance level were selected as stimuli. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 30 different scalp locations, and adaptive digital filtering was used for analysis in different frequency windows. The maximum peak-to-peak amplitudes were measured for each subject's averaged beta responses (15–30 Hz) in the 0 and 300 ms time window. Beta responses were significantly higher for unpleasant pictures than for pleasant and neutral pictures (average 50%). Beta responses were significantly higher for unpleasant than for pleasant pictures over frontal, central and parietal electrode sides (p < 0.05). Furthermore, beta responses were significantly higher for unpleasant than for neutral pictures over parietal and occipital electrodes (p < 0.04). In addition, the pleasant pictures elicited higher beta responses than neutral pictures over occipital electrode sites (p < 0.04). The results of the present study indicate that negative emotions are related to increased beta responses in humans, independent of stimulus types (facial expression or IAPS pictures). Accordingly, beta responses to negative emotions are possibly a common phenomenon. The standardization of luminance in pictures may reduce divergences between results from different laboratories.