How do emotion and motivation direct executive control?

By Luiz Pessoa. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2009

1,271 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Emotion and motivation have crucial roles in determining human behavior. Yet, how they interact with cognitive control functions is less understood. Here, the basic elements of a conceptual framework for understanding how they interact are introduced. More broadly, the `dual competition' framework proposes that emotion and motivation affect both perceptual and executive competition. In particular, the anterior cingulate cortex is hypothesized to be engaged in attentional/effortful control mechanisms and to interact with several other brain structures, including the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, in integrating affectively significant signals with control signals in prefrontal cortex. An implication of the proposal is that emotion and motivation can either enhance or impair behavioral performance depending on how they interact with control functions.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/077e7dd4d4da3ffbc3c40c2c0ada6101f0aa20a0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In General Decision Sciences

Citations in the corpus

Negative arousal amplifies the effects of saliency in short-term memory. Emotion, 12, 1367-1372. (2017, background): “While much of the literature has focused on the mechanisms underlying sensory biases to emotionally arousing stimuli (Adolphs, 2004; Pessoa, 2009; Vuilleumier, 2005), the ABC theory focuses on the more general influence arousal has on selective attention processes.”
The Impact of Developing Social Perspective-taking Skills on Emotionality in Middle and Late Childhood (2011, background): “Low to moderate emotional reactivity seems to be more optimal for social functioning than are very low or high levels of reactivity (Baumeister, Zell, & Tice, 2007; Cole, Michel,& Teti, 1994; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992; Eisenberg, Fabes et al., 2000; Pessoa, 2009).”
Reward reduces conflict by enhancing attentional control and biasing visual cortical processing (2011, methodology): “Cognition interacts with motivation in important ways, and a significant amount of research in the past decade has attempted to elucidate the neural bases of these interactions (Pessoa, 2009; Braver, Gray, & Burgess, 2007; Watanabe, 2002).”
Controllability of structural brain networks (2014, positive): “Such a theoretical prediction is supported by evidence that attentional control integrates different cognitive functions 35,36 , and that disconnections of attentional networks is accompanied by extensive cognitive deﬁcits 37,38 .”
Commonalities and Differences in the Research on Children’s Effortful Control and Executive Function: A Call for an Integrated Model of Self‐Regulation (2012, background): “Indeed, our review reveals an assortment of labels related to EF, including executive control (Pessoa, 2009), cognitive control (Casey, Tottenham, & Fossella, 2002; Miller & Cohen, 2001), and supervisory attention (Shallice, 1988).”
Cognitive Flexibility, Approaches to Learning, and Academic School Readiness in Head Start Preschool Children (2011, background): “However, these studies have tended to focus on the role that motivation plays in supporting cognitive flexibility (Pessoa, 2009).”
Effects of motivation on reward and attentional networks: an fMRI study (2012, background): “…between motivation and cognitive control has grown (Small et al. 2005; Locke and Braver 2008; Mohanty et al. 2008; Engelmann et al. 2009; Pessoa 2009; Beck et al. 2010; Daniel and Pollmann 2010; Padmala and Pessoa 2010), the neurobiological mechanisms by which motivation affects the…”
Individual Differences in Heart Rate Variability Predict the Degree of Slowing during Response Inhibition and Initiation in the Presence of Emotional Stimuli (2011, positive): “on executive control (Pessoa, 2008, 2009).”
When emotional valence modulates audiovisual integration (2012, neutral): “From the perspective of cognitive control (see Pessoa, 2009), the ventriloquist illusion constitutes a typical conflict situation in which distractor processing has to be inhibited.”
Motivation and cognitive control: from behavior to neural mechanism. (2015, background): “This notion of a limited resource figures in a wide range of theories addressing the relationship between motivation and cognitive control (see, e.g., Bijleveld et al. 2009, Persson et al. 2013, Pessoa 2009).”
The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review (2012, background): “Based on these notions, I have argued elsewhere that a network perspective is needed for the understanding of the interactions between emotion, motivation, perception, and cognition (Pessoa 2008; 2009; 2010a; Pessoa & Engelmann 2010).”
Tuning out emotional distractors by tuning in theta rhythm: improving visual working memory using transcranial magnetic stimulation (2026, unknown): “This is in line with the dual-competition framework (Pessoa 2009), which indicates that emotional distractors not only bias perceptual processing, measured in this study using auditory P2, but also executive processes.”