Selective Effect of Negative Emotion on Spatial and Verbal Working Memory: An ERP Study

We investigated the effect of negative emotion on spatial working memory (WM) and verbal WM using event-related potential (ERP) technique. A modified delayed-matching-to-sample task (DMST) was adopted and the ERPs in delay phase were analyzed. In the spatial WM task, central P2 amplitude and frontal late positive component (LPC) was reduced after centrally presented aversive pictures, relative to neutral ones. Whereas, in the verbal WM task, the ERPs were not affected by negative emotion significantly. These results suggest that negative emotion selectively interrupted spatial, but not verbal, WM rehearsal, and this selective influence may result from the effect of negative emotion on spatial attention