Temporal unpredictability of a stimulus sequence and the processing of neutral and emotional stimuli

Our findings reveal that variability in the temporal stimulus structure of an experimental setting affects cerebral activation depending on task demands. They suggest that the processing of emotional stimuli of different valence is not much affected by the decision of employing a constant or a variable temporal stimulus structure, at least in the context of implicit emotion processing tasks. In contrast, temporal structure diversely affects the processing of neutral non-social compared to emotional stimuli, emphasizing the relevance of considering this experimental feature in studies which aim at differentiating social-emotional from cognitive processing in general, and more particularly, aim at identifying circumscribed alterations of social cognition in mental disorders.