Emotion processing differences in PTSD extend across sensory modalities. EEG evidence

Heffer, Naomi; Ashwin, Chris; Tsaneva-Atanasova, Krasimira; Petrini, Karin; Karl, Anke

Abstract

Individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder show differences in processing of emotional information, including attentional biases towards trauma-/threat-related information. Previous research has relied on visual-only paradigms, but given the multisensory nature of emotion perception, there is a need to investigate emotion processing across multiple senses to fully characterise socioemotional differences in PTSD. The study presented here used an oddball paradigm to examine differences in audiovisual emotion processing between 21 individuals with PTSD, 21 individuals with a history of trauma but not PTSD, and 20 age-/sex-matched controls with no history of trauma. Participants performed a task where they had to identify rare emotional faces and voices (sad, happy or angry) among a stream of neutral stimuli. This task was performed in audio-only (voices only); visual-only (faces only); audiovisual congruent (faces-voices expressing the same emotion); and audiovisual incongruent (faces-voices expressing different emotions) conditions, while electroencephalography was used to record event-related potentials associated with neural processes of conflict/congruency detection (N200) and attentional allocation (P300). The main findings showed that individuals with PTSD exhibited enhanced P300 responses to emotional information across sensory modalities compared to trauma-exposed controls, and that larger differences were more likely to be observed for audiovisual rather than unisensory stimuli, potentially indicative of a specific multisensory pathology in PTSD. By demonstrating heightened responsivity to emotional information bearing no clear link to threat or trauma, our results align more with theories of generalised sensory hyperactivity in PTSD, compared to theories of attentional threat bias used to explain anxiety-related disorders.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: International Multisensory Research Forum 2025
• Start Date: Jul 15, 2025
• End Date: Jul 18, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jul 21, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 24, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/14706570