You are on page 1of 6

See

discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11042864

Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior

ARTICLE in SCIENCE DECEMBER 2002


Impact Factor: 33.61 DOI: 10.1126/science.1076358 Source: PubMed

CITATIONS READS

830 163

1 AUTHOR:

Raymond J Dolan
University College London
590 PUBLICATIONS 73,258 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

Available from: Raymond J Dolan


Retrieved on: 11 February 2016
Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior
R. J. Dolan, et al.
Science 298, 1191 (2002);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1076358

The following resources related to this article are available online at


www.sciencemag.org (this information is current as of November 23, 2006 ):

Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online
version of this article at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5596/1191

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 23, 2006


This article cites 53 articles, 19 of which can be accessed for free:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5596/1191#otherarticles

This article has been cited by 114 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science.

This article has been cited by 28 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5596/1191#otherarticles

This article appears in the following subject collections:


Neuroscience
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/neuroscience

Information about obtaining reprints of this article or about obtaining permission to reproduce
this article in whole or in part can be found at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/help/about/permissions.dtl

Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. Copyright
c 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title SCIENCE is a
registered trademark of AAAS.
SCIENCES COMPASS REVIEW
REVIEW: NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY

Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior


R. J. Dolan

cating serial attentive processing. However,


Emotion is central to the quality and range of everyday human experience. The for emotional stimuli there is more rapid
neurobiological substrates of human emotion are now attracting increasing interest target detection for faces with positive or
within the neurosciences motivated, to a considerable extent, by advances in func- negative expressions, or for spiders or snakes,
tional neuroimaging techniques. An emerging theme is the question of how emotion with the most consistent capture of attention
interacts with and inuences other domains of cognition, in particular attention, being evident for fear-relevant stimuli (3).
memory, and reasoning. The psychological consequences and mechanisms underlying Similar effects are seen in spatial orienting
the emotional modulation of cognition provide the focus of this article. tasks where there is a faster response to tar-
gets appearing on the same side as an emo-
tional cue (e.g., faces, spiders, threat words,

A
n ability to ascribe value to events in by the 19th-century psychologist, William conditioned shapes) and a slower response to

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 23, 2006


the world, a product of evolutionary James, questions the ultimate utility of a those appearing on the opposite side (4, 5).
selective processes, is evident across purely mind-based approach to human emo- Neuroimaging data, using spatial orienting
phylogeny (1). Value in this sense refers to an tion. James surmised that if we fancy some paradigms, point to orbital prefrontal cortex
organisms facility to sense whether events in strong emotion, and then try to abstract from as a possible site of interaction (4).
its environment are more or less desirable. our consciousness of it all the feelings of its The capture of attention is not the sole
Within this framework, emotions represent bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing means by which emotional stimuli influence
complex psychological and physiological left behind, no mind-stuff out of which the perception, and emerging evidence indicates
states that, to a greater or lesser degree, index emotion can be constituted, and that a cold mechanisms independent of attention. Per-
occurrences of value. It follows that the range and neutral state of intellectual perception is ceptual processing under conditions of limit-
of emotions to which an organism is suscep- all that remains (2). This quotation high- ed attention as, for example, processing of
tible will, to a high degree, reflect on the lights the fact that emotions as psychological stimuli at unattended spatial locations is often
complexity of its adaptive niche. In higher experiences have unique qualities, and it is referred to as preattentive. In visual backward
order primates, in particular humans, this in- worth considering what these are. First, un- masking paradigms, a briefly presented (ms)
volves adaptive demands of physical, socio- like most psychological states emotions are target can be rendered invisible if immediate-
cultural, and interpersonal contexts. embodied and manifest in uniquely recogniz- ly followed by a second masking stimulus.
The importance of emotion to the variety of able, and stereotyped, behavioral patterns of In situations where the hidden target stimulus
human experience is evident in that what we facial expression, comportment, and auto- is an emotional item, for example a condi-
notice and remember is not the mundane but nomic arousal. Second, they are less suscep- tioned angry face or a spider, preserved pro-
events that evoke feelings of joy, sorrow, plea- tible to our intentions than other psychologi- cessing can be indexed by differential skin
sure, and pain. Emotion provides the principal cal states insofar as they are often triggered, conductance responses (SCRs) to fear-rele-
currency in human relationships as well as the in the words of James, in advance of, and vant compared with fear-irrelevant targets,
motivational force for what is best and worst in often in direct opposition of our deliberate even though the target stimulus is not per-
human behavior. Emotion exerts a powerful reason concerning them (2). Finally, and ceived (6). Similar findings are evident using
influence on reason and, in ways neither under- most importantly, emotions are less encapsu- the attentional blink paradigm. This refers to
stood nor systematically researched, contributes lated than other psychological states as evi- a situation where detection of an initial target
to the fixation of belief. A lack of emotional dent in their global effects on virtually all stimulus in a visual stimulus stream leads to
equilibrium underpins most human unhappi- aspects of cognition. This is exemplified in impaired awareness, or inattentional blind-
ness and is a common denominator across the the fact that when we are sad the world seems ness, for a successive second target. This
entire range of mental disorders from neuroses less bright, we struggle to concentrate, and inattentional blindness is greatly diminished
to psychoses, as seen, for example, in obses- we become selective in what we recall. These where a second target is an emotional item
sive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizo- latter aspects of emotion and their influences (7). This finding suggests an advantage in
phrenia. More than any other species, we are on other psychological functions are ad- detection of an emotional item even in cir-
beneficiaries and victims of a wealth of emo- dressed here. cumstances where attentional resources are
tional experience. limited.
In this article I discuss recent develop- Emotion, Perception, and Attention Studies of patients with focal brain lesions
ments in the study of human emotion where, An evolutionary perspective on emotion sug- provide additional evidence for independence
for example, a neurobiological account of gests that environmental events of value of emotional processing from attentional mech-
fear, anger, or disgust is an increasingly ur- should be susceptible to preferential percep- anisms. After brain damage to right inferior
gent goal. Progress in emotion research mir- tual processing. One means of achieving this parietal cortex, patients frequently fail to per-
rors wider advances in cognitive neuro- is by emotion enhancing attention, leading to ceive a stimulus presented in their contrale-
sciences where the idea of the brain as an increased detection of emotional events. The sional hemifield (spatial neglect) or, in milder
information processing system provides a influence of emotion on attention can be stud- forms, fail to perceive a stimulus when a simul-
highly influential metaphor. An observation ied in classic visual search and spatial orient- taneous stimulus is presented on the ipsilesional
ing tasks. In a visual search, the standard side (sensory extinction). This contralesional
Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, In-
finding is that the time taken to detect a deficit is greatly attenuated for emotional stim-
stitute of Neurology, Queen Square, London WC1N specified target increases in direct proportion uli, such as faces with happy or angry expres-
3BG, UK. E-mail: r.dolan@l.ion.ucl.ac.uk to the number of irrelevant distracters, indi- sions (8) or images of spiders (9). Noncon

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 298 8 NOVEMBER 2002 1191


SCIENCES COMPASS
scious processing of emotion has also been is how processing of emotional stimuli pro- example coarse visual cues present in fearful
demonstrated in the blindfield of patients with ceeds in the absence of attention. Accumu- faces, can be processed by a noncortical path-
damage to primary visual cortex (10). These lating evidence points to the amygdala as way to enable rapid adaptive responses to dan-
findings indicate processing of emotional stim- an important mediator of emotional influ- ger (20).
uli occurs before the operation of selective at- ences on perception (Fig. 1). In functional A related neurobiological question is
tention and such preattentive processing re- neuroimaging experiments using visual how preattentive processing of emotional
sults in enhanced stimulus detection. backward masking paradigms, where emo- events influences, and indeed enhances,
Pre-attentive processing of emotional tional stimuli are presented out of aware- perception. One possibility is that inputs
stimuli, such as faces, implies an early ness, an amygdala response discriminates from emotional processing regions, in par-
discrimination between the occurrence of between unseen emotional and unseen non- ticular the amygdala, modulate the function
emotional and nonemotional events. Using emotional targets (15, 16 ). In other exper- of regions involved in early object percep-
magneto-encephalography (MEG), dis- iments with overt stimulus presentation but tual processing. Anatomically, the amygda-
la receives visual inputs from ventral visual
pathways and sends feedback projections to
all processing stages within this pathway
(21). Neuroimaging data provide evidence
for context-dependent enhancement of
functional connectivity between amygdala

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 23, 2006


and extrastriate visual regions expressed
during processing of an emotional visual
input (22, 23). There is now evidence
showing this connectivity has psychologi-
cal consequences in that after amygdala
damage a visual perceptual enhancement
for emotional items is abolished (7 ).

Emotion, Memory, and Learning


Privileged perceptual processing of emotion-
al events provide a means of not only index-
ing occurrences of value but facilitating their
availability to other cognitive domains. The
cognitive domain where the influence of
emotion is best understood is memory. En-
hanced memory for events of value allow
better predictions regarding biologically im-
portant occurrences when re-encountering
similar events in the future. The best example
is seen in classical conditioning, which pro-
vides an inflexible, ubiquitously expressed
form of emotional memory. In simple terms,
this form of memory describes a situation

CREDIT: (PAINTING) EDVARD MUNCH, THE SCREAM (1893) ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, NY
where a neutral stimulus, through pairing in
Fig. 1. An emotional-perceptual-memory circuit in the human brain. The amygdala (red), an temporal contiguity with an emotional stim-
anterior medial temporal lobe structure, is a crucial structure in registering emotional occurrences. ulus (for example, an aversive noise in fear
Extensive connection (arrows) to visual cortex (orange) and hippocampus (blue) allows amygdala conditioning), acquires an ability to predict
to modulate their function and facilitate perceptual and memory functions in those regions. future occurrences of this emotional event.
From a human behavioral perspective, the
criminatory responses to emotional faces are where attention is systematically manipu- importance of this form of memory is that it
seen in midline occipital cortex as early as 100 lated, an amygdala response to fearful faces provides a potential link between a psycho-
to 120 ms after stimulus onset, before the onset is independent of the concurrent focus of logical mechanism and psychopathological
of a characteristic face-related response at ap- attention (17 ). Studies involving patients conditions, such as phobias and post-traumat-
proximately 170 ms (11, 12). Intermodal bind- with either blindsight or visual extinction ic stress disorder (PTSD).
ing of emotion for presentation of anger in demonstrate an amygdala response to emo- Studies demonstrate that human amygdala
voice and face is associated with a distinct tional stimuli presented out of awareness in is critical for fear conditioning, a form of
electroencephalographic potential occurring at the damaged hemifield (18, 19). Residual implicit memory. Patients with amygdala
about 100 ms (13). Short-latency responses processing abilities for unaware emotional damage do not acquire conditioned fear re-
(120 to 160 ms) to aversive stimulus presenta- stimulus presentation are associated with sponses despite retaining explicit knowledge
tion are also seen during direct intracerebral engagement of a subcortical retino-collicu- regarding the conditioned (CS) and uncondi-
recordings within ventral prefrontal cortex (14). lar-pulvinar pathway specific to unaware tioned stimulus (UCS) associations (24). In
Thus, electrophysiological data point to rapid emotional stimulus processing (15, 18). contrast, patients with hippocampal damage
and widespread neuronal responses to emotion- The involvement of this pathway is of con- and intact amygdala preserve fear condition-
al stimuli that precede responses associated siderable interest, because it is also impli- ing despite being unable to demonstrate ex-
with actual stimulus identification which occur cated in residual visual processing evident plicit knowledge regarding CS-UCS contin-
at approximately 170 ms after stimulus onset. in patients with blindsight. One suggestion is gencies (25). Functional neuroimaging exper-
An important neurobiological question that certain classes of emotional stimuli, for iments also confirm the importance of the

1192 8 NOVEMBER 2002 VOL 298 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org


SCIENCES COMPASS
amygdala for learning of CS-UCS associa- of later memory (31). The role of the amygdala Emotion and Subjective Feeling States
tions but point to a time-limited role for this in episodic memory extends beyond encoding One problem that confronts human emotion
structure (26, 27 ). Evidence that the role of processes, as evidenced by the fact that this research is a conflation of mechanisms index-
the amygdala during emotional learning may structure is also engaged during retrieval of ing the occurrence of an emotional event, which
be time-limited could indicate that more en- emotional items and contexts (37, 38). may include automatic response repertoires, re-
during memory effects are expressed else- The neurochemical mechanisms by which ferred to as emotion, and their subjective or
where in the brain. Although there is an emotional events augment memory have been experiential counterparts, referred to as feelings
emphasis on the role of the amygdala in extensively studied in animal experiments (43, 44). Feelings are defined as mental repre-
human fear conditioning studies, evidence that provide evidence of a -adrenergic mod- sentations of physiological changes that charac-
indicates that it supports other forms of asso- ulation (39). Emotional memory enhance- terize and are consequent upon processing emo-
ciative learning, including reward and appet- ment in human subjects can be blocked by tion-eliciting objects or states. In more extended
itive learning (28, 29). administration of the -adrenoreceptor block- form, the suggestion is that patterned neural
Enhanced autobiographical or explicit er propranolol before study (40). This block- responses provide for a differentiation of feel-
memory for emotional events is well docu- ade is equivalent to that seen after human ing states, this account assigns an important
mented in anecdotal accounts of enhanced amygdala damage, providing indirect evi- causal role to afferent feedback, sensory and
recollection for events such as the assassina- dence that the amygdala might be a critical neurochemical, to the brain regarding emotion-
tion of President Kennedy or the Challenger locus for propranolols effects. induced changes in body state. The importance
shuttle disaster. The benefit of emotion on The fact that amygdala is engaged during of afferent feedback in the experience of emo-

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 23, 2006


episodic memory function is confirmed in episodic recall for emotional material suggests a tion is supported by phenomenological evi-
numerous studies showing mnemonic en- role beyond providing a neuromodulatory dence from patients with a rare acquired failure
hancement for material that encompasses signal to extra-amygdala structures at encod- of peripheral autonomic regulation, pure auto-
personal autobiographical, picture-, and ing. Psychological evidence that emotion in- nomic failure (PAF), who have subtle blunting
word-based items (30, 31), an effect most fluences episodic memory function indicates of emotional experience. However, the role of
pronounced in free recall tasks. An enhanced influences on hippocampal function and most feeling states extends beyond providing subjec-
memory for emotional items is also reported probably extra-amygdala regions. Learning- tive coloring to experience, and it is proposed
in amnesiacs, who despite profound deficits related plastic changes have been extensively that feelings influence functions such as deci-
in episodic memory show normal memory described in animal studies of emotion as, for sion making and interpersonal interactions (43).
enhancement for emotional material when example, the experience-dependent retuning A consequence of the fractionation of emo-
tested by recognition (32). of sensory cortices after conditioning (41). tion and feelings implies the following func-
A striking feature of the biology of emotion- These plastic changes may also be important tional arrangement. Perception of emotional
al memory is a dependence on the amygdala in the expression of emotional memory in events leads to rapid, automatic, and stereo-
that transcends the implicit-explicit distinction. humans. For example, auditory cortex plas- typed emotional responses that contrasts with
Thus, patients with bilateral amygdala damage ticity during fear conditioning to tones can be more long-term modulatory behavioral influ-
do not show an advantage in subsequent recall demonstrated with neuroimaging while ad- ences mediated by feeling states. If this general
of emotional items and events (33, 34). The ministration of the central muscaranic recep- scheme is correct, then it is expected that brain
critical role of the amygdala is also evidenced tor blocker scopolamine, before conditioning, systems supporting emotional perception and
by functional neuroimaging experiments where blocks its expression (42). This finding is execution should be distinct from those sup-
engagement of the amygdala during encoding consistent with animal studies, implicating porting feeling states. It has been proposed
predicts later recall of emotional material (35, amygdala influences on cholinergic neuro- that structures mediating feeling states are
36). Crucially, enhanced amygdala activity to transmission in the establishment of enduring those that receive inputs regarding the in-
both positive and negative stimuli is predictive memory traces (41). ternal milieu, viscera and musculoskeletal

Fig. 2. Brain regions implicated in emotional experience include orbito-


frontal cortex (yellow), insular cortex ( purple), and anterior (blue) and
posterior (green) cingulate cortices. The amygdala (red) is involved in
linking perception with automatic emotional responses and memory.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 298 8 NOVEMBER 2002 1193


SCIENCES COMPASS
structures and include the brain stem teg- decision making is evident after ventromedial ment and, in particular, to address how the
mentum, hypothalamus, insula, and so- prefrontal cortex damage, which may have no growth of emotional awareness informs mech-
matosensory and cingulate cortices (43). consequence for intellectual function but results anisms that underwrite the emergence of self-
There is now accumulating evidence that in patients making personally disadvantageous identity and social competence.
emotion and feeling are mediated by distinct decisions (56). The proposal is that these sub-
neuronal systems. Functional neuroimaging jects fail to evoke appropriate feeling states as- References and Notes
1. K. J. Friston et al., Neuroscience 59, 229 (1994).
experiments indicate that the generation and sociated with the contemplation of possible sce- 2. W. James, The Principles of Psychology (Holt, New
representation of peripheral autonomic states narios which constitute options for action. As York, 1890).
involve many of the predicted structures, par- formulated in the somatic marker hypothesis, 3. A. Ohman et al., J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 130, 466
(2001).
ticularly anterior cingulate and insular- this region provides access to feeling states in 4. J. L. Armony et al., Neuropsychologia 40, 817 (2002).
somatosensory cortices (4547) (Fig. 2). relation to past decisions during contemplation 5. K. Mogg et al., Behav. Res. Ther. 35, 297 (1997).
More specifically, recall of subjective feeling of future decisions of a similar nature (44). 6. F. Esteves et al., Psychophysiology 31, 375 (1994).
states associated with past emotional experi- Thus, evocation of past feeling states biases the 7. A. K. Anderson, E. A. Phelps, Nature 411, 305 (2001).
ences engages regions encompassing upper decision-making process, toward or away from 9.
8. P. Vuilleumier et al., Neurology 56, 153 (2001).
, Neuroreport 12, 1119. (2001).
brainstem nuclei, hypothalamus, somatosen- a particular behavioral option. Empirical support 10. B. de Gelder et al., Neuroreport 10, 3759 (1999).
sory, insula and orbitofrontal cortices (48). In for the theory includes evidence that patients 11. E. Halgren et al., Cereb. Cortex 10, 69 ( 2000).
12. M. Eimer, A. Holmes, Neuroreport 13, 427(2002).
subjects with PAF, absence of visceral affer- with lesions to ventromedial prefrontal cortex 13. G. Pourtois et al., Neuroreprort 11, 1329 (2000).
ent information regarding the peripheral body fail to generate the normal anticipatory SCR 14. H. Kawasaki et al., Nature Neurosci. 4, 15 (2001).

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 23, 2006


state attenuates emotion and effort-related ac- responses in tasks where they ponder potentially 15. J. S. Morris et al., Nature 393, 467 (1998).
16. P. J. Whalen et al., J. Neurosci. 18, 411 (1998).
tivity in similar regions (49, 50). A notable risky choices (57). In addition, neuroimaging 17. P. Vuilleumier et al., Neuron 30, 829 (2001).
feature of these studies is an absence of and neuropsycholgical evidence indicate that 18. J. S. Morris et al., Brain 124, 1241 (2001).
amygdala engagement, a critical structure in this region is activated during anticipatory states 19. P. Vuilleumier et al., Neuropsychologia 40, 2156
(2002).
emotional perception. Indeed a study of pa- (46, 58) and by outcomes associated with re- 20. J. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain ( Weidenfeld & Ni-
tients with unilateral and bilateral amygdala ward or punishment (59). The functions of this cholson, London, 1998).
lesions indicates that they experience no def- region may also extend beyond this to include a 21. D. G. Amaral, J. L. Price, A. Pitkanen, S. T. Carmichael,
in The Amygdala: Neurobiological Aspects of Emo-
icit in their phenomenal experience of emo- role in regulating interpersonal interactions by tion, Memory and Mental Dysfunction, J. Aggleton,
tion (51). The implication is that there is a providing the basis for what the philosopher Ed. (Wiley-Liss, New York, 1992).
segregation within emotion-processing re- Suzanne Langer described as the involuntary 22. J. S. Morris et al., Brain 121, 47(1998).
gions between those mediating perceptual- breach of selfhood that constitutes empathic 23. P. Rotshtein et al., Neuron 32, 747 (2001).
24. K. S. LaBar et al., J Neurosci 15, 6846 (1995).
mnemonic and experiential effects. experience. A lack of capacity for empathy may 25. A. Bechara et al., Science 269, 1115 (1995).
account for behavioral deficits of a sociopathic 26. C. Buchel et al., Neuron 20, 947 (1998).
Emotion and Decision-Making nature seen in subjects with acquired ventrome- 27. K. S. LaBar et al., Neuron 20, 937 (1998).
28. I. S. Johnsrude et al., J Neurosci 20, 2649(2000).
Within philosophy there is a long tradition that dial prefrontal damage (60, 61). 29. J. ODoherty et al., Neuron 33, 815 (2002).
views emotion and reason in direct opposition. 30. E. A. Phelps et al., Brain Cogn. 35, 85 (1997).
Such an oppositional relation has been ques- Conclusions 31. S. B. Hamann et al., Nature Neurosci. 2, 289 (1999).
32. S. B. Hamann et al., Learn. Mem. 4, 301 (1997).
tioned on the basis that, under certain cir- A growing interest in the neurobiology of emo- 33. R. Babinsky et al., Behav. Neurobiol. 6, 167 (1993).
cumstances, emotion-related processes can ad- tion parallels a wider recognition of its impor- 34. R. Adolphs et al., Learn. Mem. 4, 291 (1997).
vantageously bias judgment and reason. This tance to human experience and behavior. The 35. L. Cahill et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 93, 8016
(1996).
biasing effect appears to reflect influences of broad outlines of brain structures that mediate 36. T. Canli et al., J. Neurosci. 20, RC99 (2000).
perceptual emotional mechanisms on the one emotion and feelings are now reasonably clear 37. E. J. Maratos et al., Neuropsychologia 39, 910 (2001).
hand and feeling states on the other. In terms of and include brainstem autoregulatory systems; 38. R. J. Dolan et al., Neuroimage 11, 203 (2000).
the former, neuropsychology and functional amygdala, insula, and other somatosensory cor- 39. J. L. McGaugh, Science 287, 248 (2000).
40. L. Cahill et al., Nature 371, 702 (1994).
neuroimaging evidence indicate that the amyg- tices; cingulate and orbital-prefrontal cortices.
41. N. M. Weinberger, Neurobiol. Learn. Mem. 70, 226
dala contributes to perceptual value judgments Within this set of brain regions there is variable (1998).
as, for example, making trustworthy decisions contribution to perceptual, mnemonic, behav- 42. C. Theil, K. J. Friston, R. J. Dolan, Neuron 35, 567
in relation to the facial appearance of others ioral, and experiential aspects of emotion. De- (2002).
43. A. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens (Harcourt
(52, 53). In terms of the latter, psychological spite progress in defining a functional anatomy Brace, New York, 1999).
data point to subtle influences of body states on of emotion, we still have little idea how emo- 44. A. R. Damasio, Descartes Error (Picador, London, 1995).
decision making. For example, in masked pre- tion relates to other major axes of affective 45. H. D. Critchley et al., Brain 124, 1003 (2001).
sentation of either fear-conditioned or non- experience represented by motivation and 46. H. D. Critchley et al., Neuron 29, 537 (2001).
47. H. D. Critchley et al., J. Neurosci. 20, 3033 (2000).
conditioned stimuli, subjects show differential mood. This is an issue that is critical to a deep 48. A. R. Damasio et al., Nature Neurosci. 3, 1049 (2000).
shock expectancy ratings on shock versus no-
shock trials despite their lack of awareness of
understanding of many psychiatric disorders.
For example, patients with mood disorders dis- 50.
49. H. D. Critchley et al., Nature Neurosci. 4, 207 (2001).
, Neuron 33, 653 (2002).
51. A. K. Anderson et al., J. Cogn. Neurosci. 14, 70
shock-predictive stimuli (54). Individuals who play dysfunction in similar brain regions to (2002).
are able to detect their heartbeat on a heartbeat those that mediate emotion, yet at a psycholog- 52. R. Adolphs et al., Nature 393, 470 (1998).
detection task, an index of visceral awareness, ical level the nature of the relation is far from 53. J. S. Winston et al., Nature Neurosci. 5, 277 (2002).
54. A. Ohman et al., J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 127, 69 (1998).
have enhanced performance predicting the like- clear (62, 63). Furthermore, how neurochemical 55. E. S. Katkin et al., Psychol. Sci. 12, 366 (2001).
ly occurrence of a shock in these same para- control systems modulate affective states, in- 56. A. Bechara et al., Cereb. Cortex 10, 295 (2000).
digms (55). The inference here is that better cluding emotional states, is largely unknown. 57. A. Bechara et al., Brain 123, 2189 (2000).
58. A. Bechara et al., Science 275, 1293 (1997).
predictive judgments are mediated via an en- There is also the perplexing issue of how emo- 59. R. D. Rogers et al., J. Neurosci. 19, 9029 (1999).
hanced awareness of bodily states of arousal. tion infects rational thought processes such that 60. S. W. Anderson et al., Nature Neurosci. 2, 1032 (1999).
The volitional control of behavior is depen- people adhere, often with great conviction, to 61. R. J. Davidson et al., Science 289, 591 (2000).
dent on the functions of prefrontal cortex, par- ideas and beliefs that have no basis in reason or 62. H. S. Mayberg et al., Biol. Psych. 48, 830 (2000).
63. W. C. Drevets, Progr. Brain Res. 126, 413 (2000).
ticularly its dorsolateral and dorsomedial sec- reality. Lastly, there is an urgent need to exam- 64. R. J. D. is supported by a Wellcome Trust Programme
tors. An emotional contribution to high-level ine the role of emotion in cognitive develop- Grant.

1194 8 NOVEMBER 2002 VOL 298 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

You might also like