Resumo

Objective: To evaluate the brain activity from volunteers, measured by electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERP), during the encoding of audiovisual information with emotionally arousing content. Methodology: Twelve volunteers (mean age 20.17±0.86 years) without neurological or psychiatric history were assigned to two groups and submitted to neurophysiological recordings during the presentation of a slide series, accompanied by an emotionally arousing (EA) or neutral (N) story. Visual and auditory stimuli onset presentation were not simultaneous. Mean amplitudes were calculated for each EEG rhythm before, during and after the slide series. Difference waves were extracted from the ERP associated to visual stimuli. Resultas: Beta rhythm amplitude registered at the central electrode was lower for the group exposed to the EA content during the slide series presentation (F4, 28=3.624, p=0.038). Difference waves of ERP demonstrated a marginally significant difference in P300 component latency registered at the parietal electrode between groups (F3, 21=2.981, p=0.064). This difference is due to an increase in the mean latency during the presentation of EA content (p=0.039). Conclusion: Time domain EEG analysis and ERP difference waves suggest that EA content information might induce intermodal (auditory – visual) modulation of information encoding.