understanding the interaction between cognition and emotion

Short Notes from:
Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex
George Bush, Phan Luu and Michael I. Posner

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a part of the brain’s limbic system. Classically, this region has been related to affect, on the basis of lesion studies in humans and in animals.
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ACC might be the brain’s error detection and correction device.
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ACC is a part of a circuit involved in a form of attention that serves to regulate both cognitive and emotional processing. Neuroimaging studies showing that separate areas of ACC are involved in cognition and emotion.
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(1) Cingulate cortex includes specific processing modules for sensory, motor, cognitive and emotional information.
(2) As a whole, cingulate cortex integrates input from various sources (including motivation, evaluation of error, and representations from cognitive and emotional networks).
(3) Cingulate cortex acts by influencing activity in other brain regions and modulating cognitive, motor, endocrine and visceral responses.
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cingulate cortex encompasses numerous specialized subdivisions that subserve a vast array of cognitive, emotional, motor, nociceptive and visuospatial functions.
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Its two major subdivisions subserve distinct functions. These include a dorsal cognitive division (ACcd; areas 24b9-c9 and 329) and a rostral–ventral affective division (ACad; rostral areas 24a–c and 32, and ventral areas 25 and 33).
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The cognitive subdivision is part of a distributed attentional network. It maintains strong reciprocal interconnections with lateral prefrontal cortex (BA 46/9), parietal cortex (BA 7), and premotor and supplementary motor areas6. Various functions have been ascribed to the ACcd, including modulation of attention or executive functions by influencing sensory or response selection (or both); monitoring competition, complex motor control, motivation, novelty, error detection and working memory; and anticipation of cognitively demanding tasks (see Refs 1,3,5,6,14–17 for reviews).

The affective subdivision, by contrast, is connected to the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, anterior insula, hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex6, and has outflow to autonomic, visceromotor and endocrine systems. The ACad is primarily involved in assessing the salience of emotional and motivational information and the regulation of emotional responses5,6,15,18.
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The cognitive division (ACcd) has been activated (Fig. 2a) by cognitively demanding tasks that involve stimulus– response selection in the face of competing streams of information, including Color Stroop and Stroop-like tasks, divided- attention tasks, verbal- and motor-response selection tasks and many working-memory tasks. The affective division (ACad) has been activated (Fig. 2a) by affect-related tasks, including studies of emotional processing in normal healthy volunteers and symptom provocation studies in a number of psychiatric disorders (anxiety, simple phobia and obsessive–compulsive disorder). It has also been activated repeatedly by induced sadness in normal subjects
and in individuals with major depression.
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Combining functional imaging, anatomical and behavioral methods will be important for understanding the interaction between cognition and emotion.
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These studies suggest that both dorsal ACC and areas of the lateral prefrontal cortex operate together during tasks that involve high levels of mental effort.
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According to this hypothesis, the cognitive division of the ACC serves to monitor crosstalk or conflict
between brain areas, and this computation signals the need for control processes. Lateral areas of the cortex are then activated to provide control operations, which might include increasing or inhibiting neural activity within distinct brain areas so as to eliminate the confusion between modules.