Intentionally
altering responses to unpleasant stimuli affects physiological and hemodynamic
activity associated with emotional and cognitive processing. In the present
experiment, we measured the late-positive potential (LPP) of the visually
evoked event-related brain potential to examine the effects of intentional
emotion modulation on electrophysiological correlates of emotional and
cognitive processing. Seventeen participants received instructions to view,
suppress, and enhance emotional responses to unpleasant stimuli. Results
revealed significantly decreased electrophysiological activity during
suppression of emotional responses beginning around 250 ms poststimulus and
lasting several hundred milliseconds. These data suggest that ERPs are
sensitive to emotion modulation/regulation processes.