Neurophysiological modulation of rapid emotional face processing is associated with impulsivity traits

BACKGROUND: Sensori-perceptual processing of emotional stimuli under attentive conditions effectively prevents response disinhibition. This is observed saliently in low-impulsive people, because of their high sensitivity to warning signals, such as emotional faces. Results from human neurophysiological studies have been used to develop a dual detector model for early sensori-perceptual processing. A transient detector mechanism is related to automatic neurophysiological arousal in response to warning signals, which is reflected by early frontal event-related potential effects. The memory-based detector mechanism is associated with subsequent mismatch negativity (MMN), which reflects a short-term memory trace of signals. Based on previous findings, we predicted that impulsivity affects functional associations among the dual detector mechanisms, and modulates early frontal and/or MMN activities. In the present study, we recorded electroencephalograms for twenty-one healthy adults using a visual oddball paradigm with neutral faces as frequent stimuli, and angry and happy faces as infrequent stimuli. We measured the impulsivity traits by a self-report scale (the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, 11th version). RESULTS: Main findings were that only happy faces increased early frontal negativity and subsequent occipital visual MMN (vMMN) for emotional change, and these neurophysiological effects positively correlated with each other in a temporally causal manner. However, an impulsivity sub-trait positively correlated selectively with vMMN for the happy faces. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that higher impulsivity is associated with attenuated vMMN for emotional change detection in healthy populations, potentially because of weakened fronto-occipital functional connection that is responsible for the dual detector mechanism. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12868-015-0223-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.