Abstract
Objective Emotional states are expressed in body and mind through subjective experience of physiological changes. In previous work, subliminal priming of anger prior to lexical decisions increased systolic blood pressure (SBP). This increase predicted the slowing of response times (RT), suggesting that baroreflex-related autonomic changes and their interoceptive (feedback) representations, influence cognition. Alexithymia is a subclinical affective dysfunction characterized by difficulty in identifying emotions. Atypical autonomic and interoceptive profiles are observed in alexithymia. Therefore, we sought to identify mechanisms through which SBP fluctuations during emotional processing might influence decision-making, including whether alexithymia contributes to this relationship.
Methods Thirty-two male participants performed an affect priming paradigm and completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Emotional faces were briefly presented (20ms) prior a short-term memory task. RT, accuracy and SBP were recorded on a trial-by-trial basis. Generalized mixed-effects linear models were used to evaluate the impact of emotion, physiological changes, alexithymia score, and their interactions, on performances.
Results A main effect of emotion was observed on accuracy. Participants were more accurate on trials with anger primes, compared to neutral priming. Greater accuracy was related to increased SBP. An interaction between SBP and emotion was observed on RT: Increased SBP was associated with RT prolongation in the anger priming condition, yet this relationship was absent under the sadness priming. Alexithymia did not significantly moderate the above relationships.
Conclusions Our data suggest that peripheral autonomic responses during affective challenges guide cognitive processes. We discuss our findings in the theoretical framework proposed by Lacey and Lacey (1970).
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Conflicts of Interest and Source of Funding. Authors have no conflicts or other disclosures beyond funding information provided. The present study was supported in part by Rotary Foundation, the Society for the Study of Addiction and the European Research Council (Advanced Grant CCFIB AG 234150 awarded to HDC). Sophie Betka is grateful to the Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA) for funding support under their PhD Studentship scheme, and states that the opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SSA itself.
Abbreviations
- AIC
- Akaike Information Criterion
- AUQ
- Alcohol Use Questionnaire
- EFE
- Emotional Facial Expression
- IAPE
- Implicit Affect Primes Effort (IAPE)
- PMM
- Predictive Mean Matching
- SBP
- Systolic Blood Pressure
- TAS-20
- Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 items.