Emotion is a multicomponent reaction of organism to relevant stimuli and situations. The Influence of
consciously perceived affective sensory stimuli on a human physiology and behavior is well studied
today, but little is known about the effect of unconsciously perceived emotional stimuli. Also there is
unsolved question about the fundamental differences in physiological and behavioral reactions to
emotional stimuli perceived either consciously or unconsciously.
The purpose of current research was to carry out the comparative study of objective physiological
changes in response to emotions of different valence provoked by consciously and unconsciously
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perceived emotional stimuli. Precisely we analyzed dynamics of physiological measures (EEG, ECG,
SGR, pneumogram and the latency of sensorimotor reaction) to acoustic stimuli with different emotional
contents.
It was received that both consciously and unconsciously perceived affective stimuli provoke definite
changes in frontal asymmetry (FAS) ratio of EEG, which correspond to the valence of the experienced
emotion. However in most cases these changes to unconsciously perceived stimuli started earlier, but
were less stable than in response to consciously perceived stimuli. Activation of sympathetic nervous
system and arousal occurs in both cases of sensory perception of emotional acoustic stimuli. In case of
unconscious perception the complex of vegetative reactions (according to an ECG, SGR, respiration rate)
were more pronounced , but didn‟t depend on the valence of the provoked emotional state as compare to
conscious perception. Consciously perceived negative emotional sounds led to an increase in the time of
sensorimotor reaction and number of the missed reactions. The revealed differences in dynamics of
physiological indexes to unconsciously and consciously perceived emotional acoustic stimuli improved
understanding of the common principles of physiological mechanisms of emotional processes.