Affect is a form of cognition: A neurobiological analysis

In this paper, we suggest that affect meets the traditional definition of “cognition” such that the affect–cognition distinction is phenomenological, rather than ontological. We review how the affect–cognition distinction is not respected in the human brain, and discuss the neural mechanisms by which affect influences sensory processing. As a result of this sensory modulation, affect performs several basic “cognitive” functions. Affect appears to be necessary for normal conscious experience, language fluency, and memory. Finally, we suggest that understanding the differences between affect and cognition will require systematic study of how the phenomenological distinction characterising the two comes about, and why such a distinction is functional.

[1]  B. Mesquita,et al.  The experience of emotion. , 2007, Annual review of psychology.

[2]  R. Byrne,et al.  Differentiation in cognitive and emotional meanings: An evolutionary analysis , 2007 .

[3]  G. Clore,et al.  On the interdependence of cognition and emotion , 2007, Cognition & emotion.

[4]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  On the automaticity of emotion , 2007 .

[5]  Katherine D. Kinzler,et al.  Core knowledge. , 2007, Developmental science.

[6]  A. Keil,et al.  Modulation of the C1 visual event-related component by conditioned stimuli: evidence for sensory plasticity in early affective perception. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[7]  S. Rauch,et al.  The misattribution of salience in delusional patients with schizophrenia , 2006, Schizophrenia Research.

[8]  Luiz Pessoa,et al.  Target visibility and visual awareness modulate amygdala responses to fearful faces. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[9]  Stephan Heckers,et al.  Increased medial temporal lobe activation during the passive viewing of emotional and neutral facial expressions in schizophrenia , 2006, Schizophrenia Research.

[10]  L. F. Barrett.  Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion , 2006, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[11]  D. Amaral,et al.  Synaptic organization of projections from the amygdala to visual cortical areas TE and V1 in the macaque monkey , 2005, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[12]  Rachel J. Garoff-Eaton,et al.  Memory for Specific Visual Details can be Enhanced by Negative Arousing Content. , 2006 .

[13]  N. Humphrey.  Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness , 2006 .

[14]  E. Phelps.  Emotion and cognition: insights from studies of the human amygdala. , 2006, Annual review of psychology.

[15]  D. Amaral,et al.  The distribution of serotonergic fibers in the macaque monkey amygdala: An immunohistochemical study using antisera to 5-hydroxytryptamine , 2005, Neuroscience.

[16]  R. Dolan,et al.  Unconscious fear influences emotional awareness of faces and voices. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[17]  M. Whittingham,et al.  Vocalisation in Verbal Hallucinations: Case Report and Theoretical Model , 2005, Psychopathology.

[18]  M. Kringelbach.  The human orbitofrontal cortex: linking reward to hedonic experience , 2005, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[19]  Bruce Fischl,et al.  Thickness of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in humans is correlated with extinction memory. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[20]  N. Frijda.  Emotion experience , 2005 .

[21]  J. Nagode,et al.  Double Dissociation of Exteroceptive and Interoceptive Feedback Systems in the Orbital and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex of Humans , 2005, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[22]  Mieke Verfaellie,et al.  The Role of VMPC in Metamemorial Judgments of Content Retrievability , 2005, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[23]  J. Gross,et al.  The cognitive control of emotion , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[24]  G. Clore,et al.  The Influence of Affect on Attitude , 2005 .

[25]  J Aharon-Peretz,et al.  Impaired “Affective Theory of Mind” Is Associated with Right Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage , 2005, Cognitive and behavioral neurology : official journal of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology.

[26]  Basileios Kroustallis,et al.  Blindsight , 2007, Scholarpedia.

[27]  R. Lane,et al.  Becoming Aware of Feelings: Integration of Cognitive-Developmental, Neuroscientific, and Psychoanalytic Perspectives , 2005 .

[28]  Kent C. Berridge,et al.  Unconscious Affective Reactions to Masked Happy Versus Angry Faces Influence Consumption Behavior and Judgments of Value , 2005, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[29]  Louis C. Charland.  Emotion Experience and the Indeterminacy of Valence , 2005 .

[30]  D. Amaral,et al.  The organization of projections from the amygdala to visual cortical areas TE and V1 in the macaque monkey , 2005, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[31]  A. Zeman.  Wider than the sky The phenomenal gift of consciousness , 2004 .

[32]  J. Searle.  Mind: A Brief Introduction , 2004 .

[33]  R. Dolan,et al.  Distant influences of amygdala lesion on visual cortical activation during emotional face processing , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[34]  Joseph E LeDoux,et al.  Extinction Learning in Humans Role of the Amygdala and vmPFC , 2004, Neuron.

[35]  Elizabeth A. Phelps,et al.  How arousal modulates memory: Disentangling the effects of attention and retention , 2004, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[36]  L. Solomon,et al.  Flashbulb Memories of Personal Events of 9/11 and the Day after for a Sample of New York City Residents , 2004, Psychological reports.

[37]  A. Bechara.  The role of emotion in decision-making: Evidence from neurological patients with orbitofrontal damage , 2004, Brain and Cognition.

[38]  Jean‐Marc Dewaele,et al.  The Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words in the Speech of Multilinguals , 2004 .

[39]  E. Phelps.  Human emotion and memory: interactions of the amygdala and hippocampal complex , 2004, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[40]  D. Schacter,et al.  Memory and emotions for the september 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in patients with Alzheimer's disease, patients with mild cognitive impairment, and healthy older adults. , 2004, Neuropsychology.

[41]  E. Rolls,et al.  The functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex: evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology , 2004, Progress in Neurobiology.

[42]  Adam P. Morris,et al.  Amygdala Responses to Fearful and Happy Facial Expressions under Conditions of Binocular Suppression , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[43]  Richard E. Lucas,et al.  Extraversion and emotional reactivity. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[44]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Neuroimaging studies of attention and the processing of emotion-laden stimuli. , 2004, Progress in brain research.

[45]  S. Thompson-Schill.  Neuroimaging studies of semantic memory: inferring “how” from “where” , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[46]  Tom Johnstone,et al.  Inverse amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex responses to surprised faces , 2003, Neuroreport.

[47]  Elizabeth A. Kensinger,et al.  Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional words more vividly remembered than neutral words? , 2003, Memory & cognition.

[48]  J. Gleason,et al.  Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language , 2003, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[49]  M. C. Smith,et al.  Evidence for the differential impact of time and emotion on personal and event memories for September 11, 2001 , 2003 .

[50]  Kathy Pezdek,et al.  Event Memory and Autobiographical Memory for the Events of September 11, 2001 , 2003 .

[51]  A. Kring,et al.  Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity: Subjective Experience of Emotion in Schizophrenia , 2003 .

[52]  H. Barbas,et al.  Serial pathways from primate prefrontal cortex to autonomic areas may influence emotional expression , 2003, BMC Neuroscience.

[53]  J. Bachorowski,et al.  Reconsidering the Evolution of Nonlinguistic Communication: The Case of Laughter , 2003 .

[54]  D. Rubin,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article CONFIDENCE, NOT CONSISTENCY, CHARACTERIZES FLASHBULB MEMORIES , 2001 .

[55]  M. Farah,et al.  Ventromedial frontal cortex mediates affective shifting in humans: evidence from a reversal learning paradigm. , 2003, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[56]  A. Anderson,et al.  Neural Correlates of the Automatic Processing of Threat Facial Signals , 2022 .

[57]  D. Amaral,et al.  Topographic organization of projections from the amygdala to the visual cortex in the macaque monkey , 2003, Neuroscience.

[58]  J. Price,et al.  Architectonic subdivision of the human orbital and medial prefrontal cortex , 2003, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[59]  J. Lieberman,et al.  Implications for the neural basis of social cognition for the study of schizophrenia. , 2003, The American journal of psychiatry.

[60]  D. Rainnie,et al.  Inhibitory and Excitatory Circuitries in Amygdala Nuclei , 2003, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[61]  D. Barch,et al.  Anhedonia and the subjective experience of emotion in schizophrenia , 2003, Schizophrenia Research.

[62]  Stephan Hamann,et al.  Nosing in on the emotional brain , 2003, Nature Neuroscience.

[63]  Vinod Goel,et al.  Explaining modulation of reasoning by belief , 2003, Cognition.

[64]  Christine D. Wilson,et al.  Grounding conceptual knowledge in modality-specific systems , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[65]  J. Bachorowski,et al.  Antiphonal laughter between friends and strangers , 2003, Cognition & emotion.

[66]  K. Berridge,et al.  What is an unconscious emotion?(The case for unconscious "liking") , 2003, Cognition & emotion.

[67]  J. Russell.  Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. , 2003, Psychological review.

[68]  Michael J. Anderle,et al.  The neural substrates of affective processing in depressed patients treated with venlafaxine. , 2003, The American journal of psychiatry.

[69]  D. Schacter,et al.  Memory and emotion , 2008 .

[70]  H. Barbas,et al.  Pathways for emotion: interactions of prefrontal and anterior temporal pathways in the amygdala of the rhesus monkey , 2002, Neuroscience.

[71]  M. Cabanac.  What is emotion? , 2002, Behavioural Processes.

[72]  D. Amaral,et al.  Some observations on cortical inputs to the macaque monkey amygdala: An anterograde tracing study , 2002, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[73]  A. Ardila,et al.  Stroop effect in Spanish–English bilinguals , 2002, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[74]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Neural processing of emotional faces requires attention , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[75]  A. Craig.  How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body , 2002, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[76]  B. Everitt,et al.  Emotion and motivation: the role of the amygdala, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex , 2002, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[77]  M. Thase,et al.  Can’t shake that feeling: event-related fMRI assessment of sustained amygdala activity in response to emotional information in depressed individuals , 2002, Biological Psychiatry.

[78]  A. Marcel,et al.  Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: a theoretical framework. , 2002, Psychological review.

[79]  Ivanei E. Bramati,et al.  The Neural Correlates of Moral Sensitivity: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of Basic and Moral Emotions , 2002, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[80]  Lawrence W. Barsalou,et al.  Being there conceptually: simulating categories in preparation for situated action , 2002 .

[81]  M. Mintun,et al.  Increased amygdala response to masked emotional faces in depressed subjects resolves with antidepressant treatment: an fMRI study , 2001, Biological Psychiatry.

[82]  J. Bachorowski,et al.  Not All Laughs are Alike: Voiced but Not Unvoiced Laughter Readily Elicits Positive Affect , 2001, Psychological science.

[83]  R. Dolan,et al.  Effects of Attention and Emotion on Face Processing in the Human Brain An Event-Related fMRI Study , 2001, Neuron.

[84]  A. Damasio,et al.  Consciousness and the brainstem , 2001, Cognition.

[85]  L. Weiskrantz.  Commentary Responses and Conscious Awareness in Humans: The Implications for Awareness in Non-Human Animals , 2001, Animal Welfare.

[86]  M. Bar,et al.  Cortical Mechanisms Specific to Explicit Visual Object Recognition , 2001, Neuron.

[87]  L. Brakel.  A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination , 2001 .

[88]  D. Rendall,et al.  Sound on the rebound: Bringing form and function back to the forefront in understanding nonhuman primate vocal signaling , 2001 .

[89]  Michael Davis,et al.  The amygdala: vigilance and emotion , 2001, Molecular Psychiatry.

[90]  S. Dewhurst,et al.  Emotionality, distinctiveness, and recollective experience , 2000 .

[91]  J. Gabrieli,et al.  Event-Related Activation in the Human Amygdala Associates with Later Memory for Individual Emotional Experience , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[92]  S. Taylor,et al.  The effect of graded aversive stimuli on limbic and visual activation , 2000, Neuropsychologia.

[93]  G. Quirk,et al.  The Role of Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in the Recovery of Extinguished Fear , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[94]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Dissociable Neural Responses in Human Reward Systems , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[95]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Distinguishing Evaluation from Description in the Personality-Emotion Relationship , 2000 .

[96]  Valerie Treyer,et al.  Selection of Currently Relevant Memories by the Human Posterior Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[97]  K. Ochsner,et al.  Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[98]  D. Wentura,et al.  Automatic vigilance: the attention-grabbing power of approach- and avoidance-related social information. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[99]  T. Paus,et al.  Functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex within the human frontal lobe: a brain-mapping meta-analysis , 2000, Experimental Brain Research.

[100]  E. Rolls.  Précis of The brain and emotion. , 2000, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[101]  J. Price,et al.  The organization of networks within the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of rats, monkeys and humans. , 2000, Cerebral cortex.

[102]  Giulio Tononi,et al.  Schizophrenia and the mechanisms of conscious integration , 2000, Brain Research Reviews.

[103]  J. S. Morris,et al.  The functional anatomy of innate and acquired fear: Perspectives from neuroimaging , 2000 .

[104]  R. Murray,et al.  Meta-analysis of regional brain volumes in schizophrenia. , 2000, The American journal of psychiatry.

[105]  R. Dolan,et al.  Common effects of emotional valence, arousal and attention on neural activation during visual processing of pictures , 1999, Neuropsychologia.

[106]  L. Barsalou,et al.  Whither structured representation? , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[107]  M. Posner.  The Brain and Emotion , 1999, Nature Medicine.

[108]  J. Russell,et al.  Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: dissecting the elephant. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[109]  R. Elliott,et al.  Ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediates guessing , 1999, Neuropsychologia.

[110]  P. Holland,et al.  Amygdala circuitry in attentional and representational processes , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[111]  A. Damasio.  The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness , 1999 .

[112]  P A Turski,et al.  Metabolic rate in the right amygdala predicts negative affect in depressed patients , 1998, Neuroreport.

[113]  K. Nakayama,et al.  Binocular Rivalry and Visual Awareness in Human Extrastriate Cortex , 1998, Neuron.

[114]  A. McDonald.  Cortical pathways to the mammalian amygdala , 1998, Progress in Neurobiology.

[115]  M. Bradley,et al.  Emotional arousal and activation of the visual cortex: an fMRI analysis. , 1998, Psychophysiology.

[116]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  A neuromodulatory role for the human amygdala in processing emotional facial expressions. , 1998, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[117]  Hadyn D. Ellis,et al.  Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras delusion , 1997, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[118]  Katherine M. Mathis,et al.  Conceptual and Lexical Development in Second Language Acquisition , 1997 .

[119]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  Capgras syndrome: a novel probe for understanding the neural representation of the identity and familiarity of persons , 1997, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[120]  K. Scherer.  Profiles of Emotion-antecedent Appraisal: Testing Theoretical Predictions across Cultures , 1997 .

[121]  D. Rendall,et al.  An Affect-Conditioning Model of Nonhuman Primate Vocal Signaling , 1997 .

[122]  S. Rauch,et al.  Response and Habituation of the Human Amygdala during Visual Processing of Facial Expression , 1996, Neuron.

[123]  J L McGaugh,et al.  Amygdala activity at encoding correlated with long-term, free recall of emotional information. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[124]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Emotional Focus and Source Monitoring , 1996 .

[125]  Giambattista Vico.  The Art of Rhetoric , 1996 .

[126]  S. Carmichael,et al.  Connectional networks within the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of macaque monkeys. , 1996, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[127]  Joseph E LeDoux.  Emotional networks and motor control: a fearful view. , 1996, Progress in brain research.

[128]  Emily Schultz.  Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture‐Specific Configurations. ANNA WIERZBICKA , 1995 .

[129]  Daniel C. Dennett,et al.  The Rediscovery of the Mind , 1992, Artif. Intell..

[130]  Papez Jw.  A proposed mechanism of emotion. 1937. , 1995 .

[131]  Ulric Neisser,et al.  Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger. , 1992 .

[132]  M. Raichle,et al.  PET images of blood flow changes during anxiety: correction. , 1992, Science.

[133]  Anna Wierzbicka,et al.  Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations , 1992 .

[134]  O. John,et al.  Automatic vigilance: the attention-grabbing power of negative social information. , 1991, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[135]  L Weiskrantz,et al.  Disconnected Awareness for Detecting, Processing, and Remembering in Neurological Patients , 1991, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

[136]  A. Parent,et al.  The monoaminergic innervation of the amygdala in the squirrel monkey: An immunohistochemical study , 1990, Neuroscience.

[137]  H D Ellis,et al.  Accounting for Delusional Misidentifications , 1990, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[138]  R. M. Siegel,et al.  Foundations of Cognitive Science , 1990, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[139]  J. Bohannon.  Flashbulb memories for the space shuttle disaster: A tale of two theories , 1988, Cognition.

[140]  Sandra Smidt,et al.  Socioemotional development. , 1988, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation.

[141]  G. Edelman.  Neural Darwinism: The Theory Of Neuronal Group Selection , 1989 .

[142]  L Weiskrantz,et al.  Residual vision in a scotoma. A follow-up study of 'form' discrimination. , 1987, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[143]  M. Bond,et al.  Embarrassment and code switching into a second language , 1986 .

[144]  L. Weiskrantz.  Blindsight : a case study and implications , 1986 .

[145]  E. Azmitia,et al.  The primate serotonergic system: a review of human and animal studies and a report on Macaca fascicularis. , 1986, Advances in neurology.

[146]  D. Amaral,et al.  Amygdalo‐cortical projections in the monkey (Macaca fascicularis) , 1984, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[147]  J. Russell.  Pancultural Aspects of the Human Conceptual Organization of Emotions , 1983 .

[148]  G. Clore,et al.  Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. , 1983 .

[149]  Brian Coe,et al.  The positive and the negative , 1983, Nature.

[150]  A. Crane,et al.  Regional distribution of monoamines in the cerebral cortex and subcortical structures of the rhesus monkey: concentrations and in vivo synthesis rates , 1979, Brain Research.

[151]  A. Tversky,et al.  Prospect theory: analysis of decision under risk , 1979 .

[152]  E. Benedek.  Emotional Expression in Infancy: A Biobehavioral Study. Psychological Issues Monograph 37 , 1977 .

[153]  I. Janis,et al.  Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment , 1977 .

[154]  R J Harmon,et al.  Emotional expression in infancy; a biobehavioral study. , 1976, Psychological issues.

[155]  E. Warrington,et al.  Lasting Effects of Early Blindness a Case Study , 1974, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[156]  W. Nauta.  The problem of the frontal lobe: a reinterpretation. , 1971, Journal of psychiatric research.

[157]  G. Bellam.  The first year of life. , 1969, The American journal of nursing.

[158]  池田 勝彦.  産業構造の evolutionary analysis , 1965 .

[159]  P. Young,et al.  Emotion and personality , 1963 .

[160]  C. Osgood.  Studies on the generality of affective meaning systems. , 1962 .

[161]  J. M. Kittross.  The measurement of meaning , 1959 .

[162]  P. Maclean.  Psychosomatic Disease and the "Visceral Brain": Recent Developments Bearing on the Papez Theory of Emotion , 1949, Psychosomatic medicine.

[163]  J. W. Papez.  A PROPOSED MECHANISM OF EMOTION , 1937 .

[164]  K. M. Bridges,et al.  Emotional Development in Early Infancy , 1932 .

[165]  C. Bühler,et al.  The first year of life , 1932 .

[166]  John Dewey,et al.  The theory of emotion. , 1895 .

[167]  C. L. M.,et al.  Outlines of Psychology , 1891, Nature.

[168]  W. James.  The methods and snares of psychology. , 1890 .

[169]  R. Woodworth,et al.  Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes , 1910 .

[170]  R. K. Simpson.  Nature Neuroscience , 2022 .