Affective consequences of cognitive control: Inhibition and stimulus devaluation

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Our day-to-day survival depends on specific neurocognitive mechanisms that prioritize the possible targets of our thoughts and actions. Of these, emotion-related processes are particularly important for signaling what is beneficial and should be approached, and what is potentially problematic and should be avoided. We are now learning about a range affective signals originating from specific mental operations, such as those related to ongoing performance during cognitive control. Such signals alter our evaluations of associated stimuli and the choices we make, and thereby have important implications for our understanding of the determinants of human behaviour.******Research from my lab focuses on understanding how the brain's emotion and cognitive-control systems work together to guide behaviour. Along with our colleagues, we have shown that one cognitive mechanism in particularinhibitionhas negative affective consequences. We have identified key neural correlates of this inhibitory-devaluation effect and established that it occurs in several critical cognitive domains, including attention, motor-response selection, and working- and long-term memory. However, there is disagreement among leading accounts about exactly how inhibition leads to stimulus devaluation. And next to nothing is known about how the affective signals triggered by inhibition are related to those from other cognitive-control mechanisms. Over the next five years, my trainees and I will address these critical gaps in our understanding. Our overarching hypothesis is that inhibition is one of multiple cognitive-control mechanisms that immediately elicit negative affect via coupled neural activity across fronto-limbic brain regions. This alters the coding in memory of stimulus-associated value, which guides subsequent affective evaluations and behavioural choices based on an item's cumulative cognitive-affective history. ******Emotion and cognitive control are important for virtually every aspect of human life. Our survival, quite literally, depends on proper functioning of these systems. The interaction of cognitive-control and emotion processes guide our judgments, influence decision making, and are critical for self-regulation. Our evidence that inhibitory devaluation impacts the contents of memory, the level of motivation to pursue or avoid emotionally-significant people and objects imply that the affective consequences of cognitive-control mechanisms may be far more prevalent and impact a much wider range of human behaviour than previously thought. Finding that mechanisms of cognitive control, such as inhibition, can determine emotional and motivational responses is thus an important and fundamental discovery with potentially critical clinical applications. The studies proposed here represent new important steps in an exciting and promising area of research.