Neurophysiological processes and functional neuroanatomical structures underlying proactive effects of emotional conflicts Marie Luise Schreiter 1 , Witold Chmielewski 1 , Christian Beste * Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Germany ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Emotion Faces Conflict Proactive control EEG Source localization ABSTRACT There is a strong inter-relation of cognitive and emotional processes as evidenced by emotional conflict moni- toring processes. In the cognitive domain, proactive effects of conflicts have widely been studied; i.e. effects of conflicts in the n-1 trial on trial n. Yet, the neurophysiological processes and associated functional neuroana- tomical structures underlying such proactive effects during emotional conflicts have not been investigated. This is done in the current study combining EEG recordings with signal decomposition methods and source localization approaches. We show that an emotional conflict in the n-1 trial differentially influences processing of positive and negative emotions in trial n, but not the processing of conflicts in trial n. The dual competition framework stresses the importance of dissociable 'perceptual' and 'response selection' or cognitive control levels for interactive effects of cognition and emotion. Only once these coding levels were isolated in the neurophysiological data, processes explaining the behavioral effects were detectable. The data show that there is not only a close correspondence between theoretical propositions of the dual competition framework and neurophysiological processes. Rather, processing levels conceptualized in the framework operate in overlapping time windows, but are implemented via distinct functional neuroanatomical structures; the precuneus (BA31) and the insula (BA13). It seems that decoding of information in the precuneus, as well as the integration of information during response selection in the insula is more difficult when confronted with angry facial emotions whenever cognitive control resources have been highly taxed by previous conflicts. Introduction The last years have witnessed a vast increase in studies dealing with the inter-relation of cognitive and emotional processes. For example, a great deal of effort has been devoted to study emotional conflict moni- toring processes, i.e. by employing facial expressions in emotional Stroop tasks (Egner et al., 2008; Etkin et al., 2006). In these tasks, emotional faces are presented together with an emotional word that is either congruent or incongruent with the expressed facial emotion. Most studies have focused on identifying the neural mechanisms involved in emotional conflict resolution or response inhibition to emotional stimuli (Kanske and Kotz, 2011a; Zinchenko et al., 2015). However, it is neces- sary to distinguish this form of reactive control from proactive control processes as it has been shown that the ability to ignore an emotional distractor dimension depends on the type of cognitive control that is exerted (Botvinick et al., 2001; Grimshaw et al., 2017; Kar et al., 2017; Padmala et al., 2011). Proactive control is the ability to increase behavioral monitoring as a consequence of a conflict in a preceding trial: According to the 'conflict monitoring theory’ (Botvinick et al., 2001)a conflict in trial n-1 enhances the processing of task-relevant information in the forthcoming trial n. These effects are also known as ‘Gratton-effect’ or ‘congruency-sequence effect (CSE)’ (Gratton et al., 1992). This kind of proactive control during emotional conflicts has only been studied recently in the context of emotional processes using behavioral experi- ments (Kar et al., 2017; Padmala et al., 2011). Yet, the neuro- or elec- trophysiological processes and associated functional neuroanatomical structures underlying such proactive effects during emotional conflicts have not been investigated. This is the goal of the current study. A conceptual basis for an interaction between emotion and executive function (e.g. during conflict monitoring) has been put forward in the * Corresponding author. Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, TU Dresden, Germany, Schubertstrasse 42, D-01309, Dresden, Germany. E-mail address: christian.beste@uniklinikum-dresden.de (C. Beste). 1 Contributed equally. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect NeuroImage journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neuroimage https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.03.017 Received 15 October 2017; Received in revised form 24 February 2018; Accepted 7 March 2018 Available online 9 March 2018 1053-8119/© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. NeuroImage 174 (2018) 11–21