Affective consequences of cognitive control: Inhibition and stimulus devaluation

我们的日常生存取决于特定的神经认知机制，这些机制优先考虑我们思想和行动的可能目标。其中，情绪相关的过程尤其重要，它可以表明什么是有益的，应该接近，什么是潜在的问题，应该避免。我们现在正在学习一系列源自特定心理操作的情感信号，例如那些与认知控制过程中的持续表现有关的信号。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，从而对我们理解人类行为的决定因素具有重要意义。我实验室的研究重点是了解大脑的情绪和认知控制系统如何共同作用来指导行为。沿着我们的同事，我们已经证明了一种认知机制--抑制--具有负面的情感后果。我们已经确定了这种贬值效应的关键神经相关性，并确定它发生在几个关键的认知领域，包括注意力，运动反应选择，以及工作和长期记忆。然而，关于抑制到底是如何导致刺激贬值的，主要观点之间存在分歧。而由抑制触发的情感信号与其他认知控制机制的信号之间的关系，我们几乎一无所知。在接下来的五年里，我和我的学员将解决我们理解中的这些关键差距。 我们的总体假设是，抑制是多种认知控制机制之一，通过额叶边缘脑区域的耦合神经活动立即引起负面影响。这改变了记忆中与刺激相关的价值的编码，从而根据项目的累积认知情感历史指导随后的情感评估和行为选择。 情绪和认知控制对人类生活的几乎每个方面都很重要。我们的生存，确切地说，取决于这些系统的正常运作。认知控制和情绪过程的相互作用引导我们的判断，影响决策，并对自我调节至关重要。我们的证据表明，抑制贬值影响记忆的内容，追求或避免情感上重要的人和物体的动机水平意味着认知控制机制的情感后果可能比以前想象的要普遍得多，影响范围更广的人类行为。因此，发现认知控制机制（如抑制）可以决定情绪和动机反应是一个重要的基本发现，具有潜在的关键临床应用。这里提出的研究代表了一个令人兴奋和有前途的研究领域的新的重要步骤。

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 particular-inhibition-has 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.