A Study On The Processing And Neural Mechanism Of Disgust Words

Different theories have different views on the processing of emotional words.According to the traditional theory perspective,emotional responses to words are generated within the reading network itself subsequent to semantic activation.That is to say,when reading,we must first understand the meaning of the word,then the mood.What is different is the emerging theory,the theory of neural reuse,brain regions that are involved in processing emotional information contained in other stimuli(faces,pictures,smells)might be in charge of the processing of emotional information in words as well.That is to say,the brain regions are directly involved in processing emotional information.The neural re-use perspective assumes that newly acquired cognitive functions(e.g.language)are not the product of entirely new networks,but result from novel combinations of ‘ancient' components that are already involved in other cognitive functions.According to this perspective,emotion words would activate those brain areas outside the classic reading network(e.g.amygdala,insula,orbitofrontal cortex)that process emotions in domains other than reading.So when emotional words are processed,the need for further discussion.We focused on a specific emotion-disgust.Select Chinese words that can cause people disgusting.If we were to take the anterior insula as a likely locus for the processing of disgust in the brain,the neural re-use theory would predict a rapid activation of this structure for words with disgusting content.The traditional theory view would not necessarily predict the activation of the anterior insula but rather that of the classic reading network.In order to verify the theory of the processing of emotional words,we conducted a series of experiments.Experiment 1 is a behavioral experiment,let the subject see the word,and quickly judge it is disgust or neutral word.If it's a disgust word,right index finger press the left response mouse button;If it is a neutral word,press a response mouse button with the middle finger of their right hand.Record the response of the subjects to neutral and disgust words.If the reaction time of the disgust words is less than the neutral words,the emotional processing is earlier than that of the other.Experiment 2 is an EEG experiment,participants were instructed to read the presented words and decide as quickly and accurately as possible whether a given word referred to a ‘means of transportation'.If so,they were asked to press a response‘Y' key with the index finger of their right hand.If not,they were asked to withhold from responding.So disgust words and neutral words at the same suppression processing level,EEG and behavioral data were recorded.In the case of this kind of attention,if the subjects' responses to the disgust words were earlier than 400 ms,and they were significantly different.So,it can indirectly prove that the processing of emotion is earlier than the processing of meaning.The results showed that:(1)Emotional information of the word significantly affect our judgment on word.(2)The disgust word processing significantly faster than the neutral word processing,the processing of emotion words have an advantage than the neutral word processing.(3)The emotion response to word is early than the meaning processing.(4)The processing of emotion words follows the neural reuse theory.(5)The time of Chinese disgust words to activate cortical brain is short than French words.