Affective consequences of cognitive control: Inhibition and stimulus devaluation

认知控制的情感后果：抑制和刺激贬值

• 批准号: RGPIN-2019-04343
• 负责人: Fenske, Mark
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 依托单位: University of Guelph
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=713407
• 关键词: Affective; consequences; cognitive; control; Inhibition

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.

我们的日常生存取决于特定的神经认知机制，它优先考虑我们思想和行动的可能目标。在这些过程中，情绪相关的过程对于表明什么是有益的，应该接近，什么是潜在的问题，应该避免尤为重要。我们现在正在学习一系列源自特定心理操作的情感信号，比如那些与认知控制过程中持续表现相关的信号。这些信号改变了我们对相关刺激的评估和我们做出的选择，因此对我们理解人类行为的决定因素具有重要意义。