Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Neuroscience Letters journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neulet Neural substrates of emotional interference: A quantitative EEG study Batabyal T., Muthukrishnan S.P., Sharma R., Tayade P., Kaur S. ⁎ Stress and Cognitive Electroimaging Laboratory, Department of Physiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Cortical sources Emotional interference Frontoparietal attentional networks Inhibition Amygdala ABSTRACT Emotional stimuli are known to capture attention and disrupt the executive functioning. However, the dynamic interplay of neural substrates of emotion and executive attentional network is widely unexplored. The present study attempts to elucidate the areas implicated during emotional interference condition. Fifteen right handed individuals [24.64 ± 2.63 years] performed two emotional interference tasks – Face Word Interference and Word Face Interference. Single trial EEG was recorded during baseline (eyes open) and during the tasks. The activity of the cortical sources was compared between the tasks and baseline for 66 gyri using sLORETA software. Eighteen gyri in Face Word Interference and fifty-four gyri in Word Face Interference have shown sig- nificantly decreased activity [p < 0.05/66] with respect to baseline respectively. Interestingly, in both the interference tasks, there was disengagement of fronto-parietal attentional networks (implicating the probable ability of emotional stimuli to disrupt cognition) and the areas associated with default mode network. Further, during baseline there was significant activity in premotor cortical areas, which may be due to active inhibition of motor movements associated with response. 1. Introduction In day to day life, we face situations in which emotional interference affects cognitive control. Prioritized processing of emotional stimuli effect cognition and behavioural physiology.In the present study, cog- nitive attentional resources and cortical areas associated with the functional aspect of emotional interference has been mapped. Emotional information might have privileged entree to neural re- sources if attentional capacity is intact [1–3] resulting in possible in- terference of cognitive goals [4]. This might indicate that emotive sti- muli can momentarily access neural resources and manifest as disruption in cognitive process. On the contrary, B. T. Miller & D' Esposito in 2005 [5] and E. K. Miller & Cohen in 2001 [6] reported that an individual can perpetuate cognitive engagement despite distractions (emotional or non-emotional). This ability may be due to involvement of fronto-parietal cortical regions exhibiting “top-down” cognitive control. The neural substrates studied in relation to emotion processing in- clude amygdala for fear [7], orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) for emotion processing and stimulus–reward associations [8], whereas ven- tromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) or the brainstem circuitry med- iates emotionally relevant physiological changes of the body [9,10]. Modulation and controlling of emotional response [11,12] is associated with Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the cingulate system. Both the divisions of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) subserve different functions; the dorsal ACC is associated with cognitive control whereas the rostral ACC is associated with regulation of emotions [11]. ACC is implicated as a neural substrate for conflict monitoring and resolution in studies of cognitive control of emotional interference. ACC, ven- trolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and DLPFC are implicated to acti- vate response inhibition during cognitive-emotion interference tasks [13,14]. Modulation of emotion-cognition interaction has brought into limelight neural processes associated with attenuation of limbic- amygdala responses [15,16]. An amygdala–frontal circuit of emotion generation and regulation [17–19] has been discussed in literature widely. Researchers have reported through anatomical tracing that there exist strong reciprocal connections between amygdala, ACC, OFC, VLPFC and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) [20–22]. However, only few studies have documented the dynamic crosstalk between re- gions within the amygdala–frontal circuit. A top–down inhibitory effect of prefrontal brain regions on the amygdala [23–27] has been postu- lated as the mechanism for conscious down-regulation of emotion. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2018.07.019 Received 22 April 2018; Received in revised form 11 July 2018; Accepted 11 July 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Room no 2021, Department of Physiology, Second Floor, Teaching Block, AIIMS, New Delhi, 110029, India. E-mail addresses: tanayabatabyal@gmail.com (T. Batabyal), dr.suriyaprakash@gmail.com (S.P. Muthukrishnan), ratnaaiims@gmail.com (R. Sharma), dr.prashanttayade@gmail.com (P. Tayade), simranaiims@outlook.com (S. Kaur). Neuroscience Letters 685 (2018) 1–6 0304-3940/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T