Evolutionary psychology holds such an opinion that negative situation may threaten survival, trigger avoidance motive and have poor effects on the human body function and the psychological quality. Both disgusted and sad situations can induce negative emotions. However, differences between the two situations on attention capture and emotion cognition during the emotion induction are still not well known. Typical disgusted and sad situation images were used in the present study to induce two negative emotions, and 15 young students (7 males and 8 females, aged 27±3) were recruited in the experiments. Electroencephalogram of 32 leads was recorded when the subjects were viewing situation images, and event-related potentials (ERP) of all leads were obtained for future analysis. Paired sample t tests were carried out on two ERP signals separately induced by disgusted and sad situation images to get time quantum with significant statistical differences between the two ERP signals. Root-mean-square deviations of two ERP signals during each time quantum were calculated and the brain topographic map based on root-mean-square deviations was drawn to display differences of two ERP signals in spatial. Results showed that differences of ERP signals induced by disgusted and sad situation images were mainly manifested in T1 (120-450 ms) early and T2 (800-1 000 ms) later. During the period of T1, the occipital lobe reflecting attention capture was activated by both disgusted and sad situation images, but the prefrontal cortex reflecting emotion sense was activated only by disgusted situation images. During the period of T2, the prefrontal cortex was activated by both disgusted and sad situation images. However, the parietal lobe was activated only by disgusted situation images, which showed stronger emotional perception. The research results would have enlightenment to deepen understanding of negative emotions and to explore deep cognitive neuroscience mechanisms of negative emotion induction.
ObjectiveTo investigate the negative emotions of patients before cardiac surgery in West China Hospital in order to analyze the related factors.MethodsThe Huaxi emotional-distress index (HEI), a screening tool for mood disorders developed by the Mental Health Center of West China Hospital, was used for preoperative psychological evaluation of 1 968 adult patients hospitalized in cardiac surgery from March 2016 to July 2014. There were 835 males and 1 133 females at age of 49±13 years.Results Fifty-one patients (2.6%) had negative emotions, among whom 6 patients were screened for suicide risk. After intervention, none of them had serious consequences caused by adverse emotions, such as automatic discharge from hospital, avoidance of surgery and suicide.ConclusionThis study found that most of the cardiac surgery patients in West China Hospital have good psychological status before surgery, and a few suffered from negative emotions. “Huaxi emotional-distress index” is simple, effective and worth promoting.