Emotion and Affective Style: Hemispheric Substrates

Abstract

Research on cerebral asymmetry and the experience and expression of emotion is reviewed. The studies described use electrophysiological procedures to make inferences about patterns of regional cortical activation. Such procedures have sufficient temporal resolution to be used in the study of brief emotional experiences denoted by spontaneous facial expressions. In adults and infants, the experimental arousal of positive, approach-related emotions is associated with selective activation of the left frontal region, while arousal of negative, withdrawal-related emotions is associated with selective activation of the right frontal region. Individual differences in baseline measures of frontal asymmetry are associated with dispositional mood, affective reactivity, temperament, and immune function. These studies suggest that neural systems mediating approach- and withdrawal-related emotion and action are, in part, represented in the left and right frontal regions, respectively, and that individual differences in the activation levels of these systems are associated with a coherent nomological network of associations which constitute a person's affective style.

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Affiliated Institutions

• University of Wisconsin–Madison US

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