Cognitive and neural mechanisms for goal revision and emotional change

我目前和计划中的研究旨在通过开发新的目标修改、情绪变化和一种我称之为“直觉过度反应”的非理性模型来加深对情绪认知的理解。我计划开发开发和修订目标的神经网络模型，极大地扩展我之前对它们对决策做出的贡献的描述。理解目标修正的第一个目标是解释如何通过神经元群体中的放电模式来代表目标，如获得拨款。第二个目标是解释人们是如何接受新目标的。第三个目标是解释人们有时是如何放弃目标的。我的第四个目标是解释人们如何增加或降低目标对问题或决策的估计重要性。目标修正理论将成为更大的情绪变化理论的一部分。对情绪变化建模的第一个目标将是建立一个关于评估可以被修改的所有方式的帐户。第二个目标是模拟生理变化影响情绪变化的方式，这些情绪变化是通过外部对刺激的感知(如可怕的图像)以及通过干预措施(如药物、放松练习和冥想练习)发生的。第三个目标是将认知评估和生理感知结合在一起，这是由先前开发的EMOCON模型提出的。第四个目标是确定长期情绪变化的机制。第五个目标是将对情绪变化的更好理解应用到冲突解决过程中。一种情绪变化会产生一种非理性的模式，既可能导致过度积极的评估，也可能导致过度负面的评估。这种过度反应发生在人类生活的许多领域，会对财务决策、人际关系和医疗行为产生不良影响。为了了解肠道过度反应对推理的影响，我计划开发计算机模拟放大反馈环路对推理动力学的影响。

My current and planned research is aimed at deepening understanding of emotional cognition by developing new models of goal revision, emotional change, and a kind of irrationality I call "gut overreaction". I plan to develop neural network models of the development and revision of goals, greatly expanding my previous accounts of their contributions to decision making. The first objective for understanding goal revision is to explain how goals such as get a grant might be represented by a pattern of firing in a population of neurons. The second objective is to explain how people come to adopt new goals. The third objective is to explain how people sometimes come to abandon goals. My fourth objective is to explain how people increase or decrease the estimated importance of goals to a problem or decision. The theory of goal revision will be part of a larger theory of emotional change. The first objective in modeling emotional change will be to develop an account of all the ways in which appraisals can be modified. The second objective is to model ways in which physiological changes can influence emotional change that occur through external perception of stimuli such as scary images and through interventions such as drugs, relaxation exercises, and meditation practices. The third objective is to put the cognitive appraisal and physiological perception together in the integrated fashion proposed by the previously developed EMOCON model. The fourth objective is to identify mechanisms for long-term emotional change. The fifth objective is to apply an improved understanding of emotional change to processes of conflict resolution. One kind of emotional change produces a pattern of irrationality that can lead both to excessively positive assessments and to excessively negative ones. Such overreactions occur in many spheres of human life, with undesirable effects on financial decisions, personal relationships, and medical behavior. In order to understand the influence of gut overreactions on inference, I plan to develop computer simulations of the effects of amplifying feedback loops on inferential dynamics.