Cognition and Emotion Interplay

Jun 25, 2024

Lecture Notes: How Cognition Affects Emotion and Vice Versa

Introduction

  • Focus: On the interplay between cognition and emotion, specifically the role of the frontal lobe in modulating emotional responses and how emotions can, in turn, affect cognition.
  • Key Theories: James-Lange, Bard, and Schachter-Singer theories of emotion.

Cognition Affects Emotion

Emotion Processing

  • Bottom-up processing: Automatic physiological responses (e.g., fight-or-flight when seeing a tiger).
  • Top-down processing: Cognitive interpretation of the situation (e.g., seeing a tiger on TV—no need to run).

Cognitive Appraisal

  • Concept: How we appraise or interpret the context affects the resulting emotion.
  • Examples: A person bumping into you and your emotional reaction based on whether they apologize or ignore you.

Lab Studies

  • Pictures: Participants react naturally vs. interpret negatively. Negative interpretations lead to higher amygdala activation and negative emotions.
  • Brain Activity: Top-down control involves regions like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex.

Emotion Regulation Techniques

  • Distraction: Effective in reducing negative emotions by occupying working memory with other tasks.
  • Cognitive Reappraisal: Modifying how you think about a situation to change its emotional impact.
  • Controlled Breathing and Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Basic methods to regulate unwanted emotions.

Distraction and Reappraisal Studies

  • Distraction: Hard math problems reduce negative moods and increase prefrontal cortex activity.
  • Reappraisal Techniques: Imagining negative pictures as photoshopped, seeing oneself in third-person, etc., reduce negative emotions and amygdala activation.

Emotion Affects Cognition

Memory Studies

  • Skydiving Study: Skydivers remembered more relevant (skydiving-related) words when learned in an aroused state.
  • Attentional Narrowing: Arousal can lead to better memory for situationally relevant information but worse for irrelevant information.
  • Mood State Dependent Memory: Recall is better when mood at learning matches mood at recall.

Decision-Making

  • Emotion and Decision-Making: Damage to emotional brain regions affects investment decisions. Healthy controls are influenced by previous trial outcomes.
  • Rationality vs. Emotion: Emotion-induced biases can make decisions seem irrational to outsiders, but they are essential for everyday functioning.

Specific Emotions and Decision-Making

  • Anxiety and Sadness: Lead to pessimistic judgments about future negative events.
  • Anger: Counter-intuitively associated with optimistic judgments about the future.
  • Positive Moods: Can lead to risk-aversion but effects depend on the type of positive mood.

Biases Induced by Emotions

  • Belief Bias: Tendency to accept conclusions we agree with, even if they are logically invalid.
  • Attentional Bias: Anxiety sufferers show selective attention to threat-related stimuli during tasks like the Emotional Stroop Task and Dot Probe Task.

Training to Reduce Emotional Biases

  • Dot Probe Task: Training alcoholics to pay attention away from alcohol-related stimuli can reduce their consumption.
  • Interpretive Bias Training: Encouraging positive interpretations of ambiguous scenarios helps reduce anxiety.

Clinical Applications

Phobias

  • Classical Conditioning: Phobias may arise from painful or negative experiences with specific objects or situations.
  • Systematic Desensitization: Gradual exposure to feared stimuli while remaining relaxed can change fear associations.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

  • Symptoms: Persistent intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and anxiety after a traumatic event.
  • Stress Hormones: Dysregulated release systems can keep stress responses active, contributing to PTSD.
  • Propranolol: Can interfere with stress hormones and potentially reduce the likelihood of developing PTSD if administered after a traumatic event.

Identification of At-Risk Individuals

  • Smaller Hippocampal Volume: Correlated with higher susceptibility to PTSD. Twin studies suggest smaller hippocampi may be an inherent risk factor rather than a consequence of PTSD.