The discovery of the late positive potential (LPP) in response to emotional pictures and reports of emotional arousal, indicating enhanced emotional engagement (Cuthbert et al., 2000), has significantly shaped electrophysiological research in affective science for the past two decades. In the present symposium we aim to synthesize the latest advances in LPP research and various fields of applications in associative learning, imagery, emotion regulation and perception. The first two talks will present novel LPP findings on how initially neutral information can acquire emotional significance through associative mechanisms. Anne-Kathrin Schacht (University of Göttingen) will illustrate how these processes unfold in the visual domain, using both social and non-social events in younger adults. Next, Christian Panitz (University of Bremen) will present data from an imagery-based conditioning paradigm, investigating whether stimuli paired with aversive imagery evoke increased LPP amplitudes in children. The third talk by Kornelia Gentsch (University of Mainz) will offer new insights into how spontaneous, socially triggered emotion regulation shapes early and late appraisal processes across different sensory modalities (visual, auditory, olfactory). Finally, Carlos Ventura-Bort (University of Potsdam) will provide new perspectives on correspondence between LPP and self-reported measures. Using representational similarity analysis in an affective picture-viewing task, this talk will explore the trial-by-trial relationship between LPP amplitudes and various affect-related models, such arousal and valence. Taken together, our symposium will highlight the versatility of the LPP as a valuable electrophysiological marker of emotional engagement in psychological research and broaden its interpretation and application.

The late positive potential (LPP) is a robust electrophysiological marker of emotional engagement, typically studied in response to inherently emotional stimuli such as affective images or words. In two ERP studies (N = 40 and N = 37), we examined how emotional relevance, acquired through cross-modal associative learning, modulates late positive components during face perception. Neutral faces were paired with emotional vocalizations in a learning phase, followed by test phases in which only the faces were presented. In Study 1, participants explicitly learned individual face–voice pairings, while Study 2 employed incidental learning during a gender-matching task. Both studies used a cross-modal associative learning paradigm with a delayed test phase, allowing us to assess the consolidation and reactivation of learned affective relevance. EEG was recorded, along with behavioral responses and likability and valence ratings. LPP amplitudes were enhanced for faces previously associated with emotional (vs. neutral) voices—but crucially, only when emotional relevance was reinforced through task demands (Study 1). These late ERP modulations were paralleled by behavioral indicators of successful associative learning and increased likability. In contrast, an emotion-implicit task during learning and test did not elicit such effects. These findings underscore the importance of task context in driving LPP effects for learned relevance and reveal striking parallels to findings from inherently emotional stimuli, where late positivities benefit from explicit emotional evaluation. Together, the results highlight the flexibility of the LPP in indexing both inherent and acquired emotional salience, modulated by top-down task engagement.

Childhood is a critical period for the development of persistent fears, yet some mechanisms underlying fear acquisition in the absence of real-life aversive experiences remain to be explored. This pre-registered study examined whether repeated mental imagery of aversive events can influence threat appraisal and conditioned psychophysiological responses in children. Using a novel imagery-based learning paradigm, children aged 7 to 10 imagined threatening and non-threatening encounters with different fictional animals. Landscapes, serving as conditioned stimuli, were subsequently paired with these imagery experiences. Valence and arousal ratings were collected for both animals and conditioned landscape stimuli, alongside late positive potential (LPP) data to assess a neural marker of emotional engagement. We hypothesized that children would rate animals and landscapes associated with aversive imagery as more negative and arousing and that LPP amplitudes would be enhanced in response to threat-related stimuli. These findings will provide insight into the role of repeated mental imagery in childhood fear development and maintenance, with potential implications for early intervention strategies.

Emotion-antecedent appraisal is widely recognized as a sufficient cause of emotional experiences. However, the extent to which appraisals can be modified via emotion regulation remains an open question. In everyday interactions, emotional regulation occurs spontaneously, influenced by social context—whether one is alone or in the presence of others. To examine the impact of emotion regulation on appraisal processes, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a social judgment task. Forty-eight right-handed healthy students (23 males, 25 females; M = 23 years, SD = 4.30) participated in the experiment. The task manipulated two types of appraisals: (1) intrinsic pleasantness, operationalized via exposure to pleasant and unpleasant stimuli across three sensory modalities (vision, audition, olfaction), and (2) goal conduciveness, varied through feedback indicating whether participants’ judgments aligned or conflicted with their task-related goal (judging correctly). Emotion regulation was examined by comparing two conditions: in one session, participants performed the task alone; in another, they completed the task while seated next to a confederate (an “expert on emotion expression”). We hypothesize that early appraisal processes (e.g., intrinsic pleasantness) are more resistant to regulation compared to later, goal-related appraisals. These effects are tested on the Late Positive Potential (LPP) as an index of motivated attention and emotional processing, and results will be presented at the symposium.

It is a well-established finding that the processing of high arousing events, compared to low arousing ones, is associated with a more pronounced Late Positive Potential (LPP)—a positive slow wave, maximal at centro-parietal electrodes (from 300-800 ms). In this talk, we aimed at extending these findings by investigating the trial-by-trial correspondence between LPP amplitudes and subjective arousal and valence, using representational similarity analysis (RSA). In study 1 (N= 87), participants completed a passive picture viewing task (30 pleasant, 30 unpleasant and 30 neutral IAPS images) while EEG was recorded. Afterward, they rated the images based on arousal and valence. Replicating prior research, highly arousing images elicited larger LPP amplitudes than neutral ones. However, RSA revealed no clear association between the representational structure of the LPP and subjective arousal or valence. Instead, by testing different models the best fit was observed when distinguishing the most salient content (evoking the largest LPP) from the remaining contents (“Salience” model). In study 2, attentional focus was manipulated, instructing participants to either focus on emotional (affective category) or non-emotional (surrounding frame) aspects of the images (60 pleasant, 60 unpleasant and 60 neutral IAPS images) while EEG was collected. Preliminary analysis (N=40) revealed that the Salience model again best explained the LPP representation, especially when the affective categories were relevant to the task. Overall, our results suggest that the LPP may not necessarily encode subjective affect but –similar to the P300– rather the processing of salient contents, which is also modulated by top-down processes.