The Impact of Emotional States on Cognitive Control Circuitry and Function

Abstract

Typically in the laboratory, cognitive and emotional processes are studied separately or as a stream of fleeting emotional stimuli embedded within a cognitive task. Yet in life, thoughts and actions often occur in more lasting emotional states of arousal. The current study examines the impact of emotions on actions using a novel behavioral paradigm and functional neuroimaging to assess cognitive control under sustained states of threat (anticipation of an aversive noise) and excitement (anticipation of winning money). Thirty-eight healthy adult participants were scanned while performing an emotional go/no-go task with positive (happy faces), negative (fearful faces), and neutral (calm faces) emotional cues, under threat or excitement. Cognitive control performance was enhanced during the excited state relative to a nonarousing control condition. This enhanced performance was paralleled by heightened activity of frontoparietal and frontostriatal circuitry. In contrast, under persistent threat, cognitive control was diminished when the valence of the emotional cue conflicted with the emotional state. Successful task performance in this conflicting emotional condition was associated with increased activity in the posterior cingulate cortex, a default mode network region implicated in complex processes such as processing emotions in the context of self and monitoring performance. This region showed positive coupling with frontoparietal circuitry implicated in cognitive control, providing support for a role of the posterior cingulate cortex in mobilizing cognitive resources to improve performance. These findings suggest that emotional states of arousal differentially modulate cognitive control and point to the potential utility of this paradigm for understanding effects of situational and pathological states of arousal on behavior.

An unpleasant emotional state reduces working memory capacity: electrophysiological evidence

“…Cohen et al (2016) showed that sustained, but not transient, positive and unpleasant emotional states are associated with changes in performance and altered neural activation and connectivity in healthy adults. They did so by demonstrating that the brief presentation of emotional cues less efficiently modulates cognitive control capacity.…”

“…Interestingly, the studies described above showed concomitant competition for representation in WM because the emotional stimulus was presented in a randomized manner during the experimental session. However, emotion-cognition interaction has also been investigated across longer timescales in studies that induced a sustained emotional state (Bradley et al , 1996; Smith et al , 2005; Pereira et al , 2006; Brouwer et al , 2013; Ben-Haim et al , 2014), and this approach may be related to enhanced modulation of cognitive control by emotional stimuli (Cohen et al , 2016). …”

Combined effects of peer presence, social cues, and rewards on cognitive control in adolescents

“…Participants were recruited from Los Angeles and New York City as part of a larger study. Participants were 21.6% African American, 14.8% Asian, 36.9% Caucasian, 22.7% Hispanic, and 4.0% “other.” Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions—“Alone” (97 completed the go/no‐go task as reported in Cohen, Dellarco, et al, ) or “Peer” (79 completed the go/no‐go task under the impression that a same‐aged, same‐gender peer was watching and evaluating their performance). Assignment into the peer versus alone group was counterbalanced across subjects and sites.…”

“…All participants completed the Cognitive Control Under Emotion (CCUE) task (Cohen, Dellarco, et al, , Supplementary Figure S1) programmed using E‐Prime 2.0. In the task, participants were presented with smiling, fearful, and neutral face cues while under sustained anticipation of a negative event (an aversive sound), positive event (winning up to $100), or neutral event (no risk of a positive or negative event).…”

“…In the task, participants were presented with smiling, fearful, and neutral face cues while under sustained anticipation of a negative event (an aversive sound), positive event (winning up to $100), or neutral event (no risk of a positive or negative event). Events were depicted by different colored backgrounds behind the cues (e.g., yellow, blue, purple) and (along with the cues) were pseudorandomized and counterbalanced between participants and within runs to control for item and order effects (see Cohen, Breiner, et al, ; Cohen, Dellarco, et al, ; and Supplementary Figure S1 for more task detail). Participants were informed that the occurrence of the positive or negative event was not based on their performance.…”