Talk:Cognition and emotion

Very well-written and interesting article. I just have a few minor comments/suggestions:

The sentence “Furthermore, the functioning of subcortical structures that mediate emotion is thought to be unaware by some researchers” is a bit confusing. Although it is further elaborated in the next sentence, it gives the (wrong) impression that according to this view all amygdala-mediated emotional processing occurs outside awareness.

The statement “Recent studies suggest that, in humans, even retinotopically organized visual cortex, including visual areas V1 and V2 along the calcarine fissure, are modulated by the affective significance of a stimulus” could benefit from a reference.

The section of emotion and memory could include some more recent studies. Also, “the notion that the enhancement of memory due to emotion is due mainly to the arousal dimension of emotional items and not valence (positive/negative) per se.” is still controversial. Perhaps a mention to the recent studies by Sergerie et al (2006, 2007) on recognition memory for emotional faces (which indirectly speaks to this issue) could be included (though I should point out a conflict of interest here as a co-author in these studies).

The pioneering work of Norm Weinberger should be acknowledged when discussing the possible role of the basal forebrain in emotional processing.

Although the focus of this article seems to be on the influence of emotion on cognition, perhaps a small section on the impact of cognition on emotion could be included (I am mostly thinking of emotion regulation studies).

--Jorge L. Armony

Revisions

Thanks for the constructive feedback. All revisions were incorporated and the paper should read better now! In particular: (1) The "Furthermore" sentence was removed; (2) A reference was added for V1/V2; (3) The section on emotion and memory was updated; (4) Weinberger's work is acknowledged; (5) A short section on cognitive emotional regulation was added.

-LP

Comment

Wonderful article, very informative. Most of my revisions are contained in the article.

However, it might be useful to mention affective blindsight (research by de Gelder, Morris, Dolan, 2005), because it provides one of the stronger cases for a possible "emotion" only pathway for processing faces. This could probably be inserted and discussed when you discuss Whalen/Dolan (unconscious fear perception of fear faces) in the last paragraph of the perception/attention section.

The last comment I have stems from my background of being a social psychologist. The emotion/cognition debate really came into being with Zajonc and the mere-exposure (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Zajonc, 1980). This led to a strong belief in affective primacy with the underlying assumption that affect was primary to and independent of cognition. This affective primacy view was supported furthermore with affective priming research (see Bargh et al., 1992) Moreover, Zajonc, and later Bargh, both used LeDoux's low route to further advance their position and put a mechanism to their behavioral findings. Thus, I believe it would be useful and highly relevant to add a paragraph to the intro that involves some of the early behavioral research, that I believe led to some of the definitional and presumptions that started the wave of neuroscience research in the late 90s with Whalen, Dolan, Morris, and Ohman. These behavioral findings shifted the debate to focus on affect being related to unconscious processing and subcortical activity, whereas cognition being related to conscious processing and cortical involvement. Ultimately, it would make the article that much more complete by discussing some of the initial classic behavioral findings and reviews that shaped the theoretical arguments for affective primacy (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Bargh et al., 1992; Bornstein, 1989; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Bargh, 1997; Fazio et al., 1986; Klauer & Musch, 2003, also see Storbeck, Robinson, & McCourt, 2006) There is also a nice study by Elliott & Dolan (1998) looking at the mere-exposure effect with fMRI.

--Justin Storbeck

Revisions

Thanks for the careful feedback to the article. All suggested changes were made/accepted. Note that (1) A direct link to the Scholarpedia entry on affective blindsight was made; (2) The paragraph above was adapted to end the Introduction. A lengthier discussion of some of the issues (including the mere-exposure effect) was not included to keep the article from growing even further (the original contribution was indeed on the lengthy side given that it should be an encyclopedic entry).

-LP