Frontal Asymmetry Analysis of Theta Wave in the Audio Emotional Experiment Revealed by Event-related Spectral Perturbation

Hemispheric asymmetry in prefrontal activation have been proposed in two decades ago, as measured by electroencephalographic (EEG) power in the theta band (4-8Hz), is related to reactivity to affectively pleasure audio stimuli. In this study, we designed an emotional audio stimulus experiment in order to verify frontal EEG asymmetry by analyzing ERSP results. Thirty healthy college students volunteered the stimulus experiment with the standard IADS affective sounds. These affective sound clips are classified in three emotion states, happy, neutral and fear. ERSP image results revealed that there are the stronger responses of high arousal (fear and happy) in the left prefrontal lobe, while the stronger responses of low arousal (neutral) in the right pre-frontal lobe. However, the high pleasure emotions (happy) can elicit greater relative right EEG activity, while the low and middle pleasure emotions (fear and neutral) can elicit the greater relative left EEG activity. Additionally, the most response differences of theta band have been found out in the medial frontal lobe, which is proved as the frontal midline theta.