RESEARCH ARTICLE
Overlapping Neural Correlates of Reading Emotionally Positive and Negative Adjectives
Traute Demirakca1, 3, Cornelia Herbert1, Johanna Kissler2, Matthias Ruf3, Tim Wokrina3, Gabriele Ende*, 3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 54
Last Page: 57
Publisher ID: TONIJ-3-54
DOI: 10.2174/1874440000903010054
PMID: 19641618
PMCID: PMC2713415
Article History:
Received Date: 26/7/2008Revision Received Date: 15/8/2008
Acceptance Date: 18/5/2009
Electronic publication date: 3/7/2009
Collection year: 2009

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Comparison of positive and negative naturally read adjectives to neutral adjectives yielded an overlapping higher BOLD response in the occipital and the orbitofrontal cortex (gyrus rectus). Superior medial frontal gyrus and posterior cingulate gyrus showed higher BOLD response to negative adjectives and inferior frontal gyrus to positive adjectives. The overlap of activated regions and lack of pronounced distinct regions supports the assumption that the processing of negative and positive words mainly takes place in overlapping brain regions.