Basic emotions: Differences in time sequence and functional imaging with low resolution brain electrical tomography (LORETA)

The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between the time course of brain activation during the observation of pictures depicting scenes associated with the four basic emotion of happiness, sadness, fear and disgust. Twenty-nine right-handed volunteers (17 male, 12 female; mean age 24.6 years) took part in the study. To study the time course of the affective processing the low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) has been used. Each emotional condition has shown specific activation patterns in different brain regions, changing over time. Our findings are in good agreement with other brain-imaging studies (PET/fMRI) but with the advantage to investigate the temporal evolution of the emotional process in the millisecond range. The results showed that the time sequence of activations is different and characteristic for each emotion conditions.