E-ISSN : 2733-4538
This study was intended to investigate the connection between emotional stimuli and brain activities by the use of ERP which is one of the central measures in the psychophysiology. The Davidson's motivation model was testified, which is based on both the frontal superiority over the emotional stimuli and the traditional valence model. It was hypothesized that the emotional stimuli consisting of sexual contents would activate the left frontal area due to the quality of appetitive motivation-approach behavior. 15 female and 15 male students participated in the experiment. The independent variables were two factors including stimulus types(neutral vs emotional) and scalp sites (F<sub>3</sub>, F<sub>4</sub>, C<sub>2</sub>, P<sub>3</sub>, P<sub>4</sub>). P300 amplitude was obtained as a dependent measure. The results differed dependiy on the gender. Male showed the left anterior superiority over the emotional stimuli about the word and picture trials. Female showed the same results as male's about the word trials, but characteristically showed a weak frontal superiority and pervasive activation over the brain.