Eliza Bliss-Moreau

The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review

Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain-emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories.

Functional grouping and cortical–subcortical interactions in emotion: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

We performed an updated quantitative meta-analysis of 162 neuroimaging studies of emotion using a novel multi-level kernel-based approach, focusing on locating brain regions consistently activated in emotional tasks and their functional organization into distributed functional groups, independent of semantically defined emotion category labels (e.g., anger, fear). Such brain-based analyses are critical if our ways of labeling emotions are to be evaluated and revised based on consistency with brain data. Consistent activations were limited to specific cortical sub-regions, including multiple functional areas within medial, orbital, and inferior lateral frontal cortices. Consistent with a wealth of animal literature, multiple subcortical activations were identified, including amygdala, ventral striatum, thalamus, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray. We used multivariate parcellation and clustering techniques to identify groups of co-activated brain regions across studies. These analyses identified six distributed functional groups, including medial and lateral frontal groups, two posterior cortical groups, and paralimbic and core limbic/brainstem groups. These functional groups provide information on potential organization of brain regions into large-scale networks. Specific follow-up analyses focused on amygdala, periaqueductal gray (PAG), and hypothalamic (Hy) activations, and identified frontal cortical areas co-activated with these core limbic structures. While multiple areas of frontal cortex co-activated with amygdala sub-regions, a specific region of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC, Brodmanns Area 9/32) was the only area co-activated with both PAG and Hy. Subsequent mediation analyses were consistent with a pathway from dmPFC through PAG to Hy. These results suggest that medial frontal areas are more closely associated with core limbic activation than their lateral counterparts, and that dmPFC may play a particularly important role in the cognitive generation of emotional states.

A Practical Guide to Experience-Sampling Procedures

Experience-sampling is a powerful method for understanding a range of psychological phenomena as they occur in the daily lives of individuals. In this primer, we discuss the different techniques, equipment, and design options available to the experience-sampling researcher. We place special emphasis on computerized procedures and discuss the crucial social dynamic of the research team, which optimizes the success of experience-sampling procedures.

Affect as a Psychological Primitive

In this article, we discuss the hypothesis that affect is a fundamental, psychologically irreducible property of the human mind. We begin by presenting historical perspectives on the nature of affect. Next, we proceed with a more contemporary discussion of core affect as a basic property of the mind that is realized within a broadly distributed neuronal workspace. We then present the affective circumplex, a mathematical formalization for representing core affective states, and show that this model can be used to represent individual differences in core affective feelings that are linked to meaningful variation in emotional experience. Finally, we conclude by suggesting that core affect has psychological consequences that reach beyond the boundaries of emotion, to influence learning and consciousness.

Interoceptive Sensitivity and Self-Reports of Emotional Experience

People differ in the extent to which they emphasize feelings of activation or deactivation in their verbal reports of experienced emotion, termed arousal focus (AF). Two multimethod studies indicate that AF is linked to heightened interoceptive sensitivity (as measured by performance on a heartbeat detection task). People who were more sensitive to their heartbeats emphasized feelings of activation and deactivation when reporting their experiences of emotion over time more than did those who were less sensitive. This relationship was not accounted for by several other variables, including simple language effects. Implications for the role of interoception in experienced emotion and the validity of self-reported emotion are discussed.

Language and the Perception of Emotion

Three studies assessed the relationship between language and the perception of emotion. The authors predicted and found that the accessibility of emotion words influenced participants speed or accuracy in perceiving facial behaviors depicting emotion. Specifically, emotion words were either primed or temporarily made less accessible using a semantic satiation procedure. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were slower to categorize facial behaviors depicting emotion (i.e., a face depicting anger) after an emotion word (e.g., anger) was satiated. In Study 3, participants were less accurate to categorize facial behaviors depicting emotion after an emotion word was satiated. The implications of these findings for a linguistically relative view of emotion perception are discussed.

Of Mice and Men: Natural Kinds of Emotions in the Mammalian Brain? A Response to Panksepp and Izard

For almost 5 decades, the scientific study of emotion has been guided by the assumption that categories such as anger, sadness, and fear cut nature at its joints. Barrett (2006a) provided a comprehensive review of the empirical evidence from the study of emotion in humans and concluded that this assumption has outlived its usefulness. Panksepp and Izard have written lengthy papers (published in this issue) containing complementary but largely nonover lapping criticisms of Barrett (2006a). In our response, we address three of their concerns. First, we discuss the value of correlational versus experimental studies for evaluating the natural-kind model of emotion and refute the claim that the evidence offered in Barrett (2006a) was merely correlational. Second, we take up the issue of whether or not there is evidence for “coherently organized neural circuits for natural kinds of emotions in the mammalian brain and counter the claim that Barrett (2006a) ignored crucial evidence for existence of discrete emotions as natural kinds. Third, we address Panksepp and Izards misconceptions of an alternative view, the conceptual act model of emotion, that was briefly discussed in Barrett (2006a). Finally, we end the article with some thoughts on how to move the scientific study of emotion beyond the debate over whether or not emotions are natural kinds.

The Visual Impact of Gossip

Negative gossip about a person renders that person’s face more visible to the onlooker. Gossip is a form of affective information about who is friend and who is foe. We show that gossip does not influence only how a face is evaluated—it affects whether a face is seen in the first place. In two experiments, neutral faces were paired with negative, positive, or neutral gossip and were then presented alone in a binocular rivalry paradigm (faces were presented to one eye, houses to the other). In both studies, faces previously paired with negative (but not positive or neutral) gossip dominated longer in visual consciousness. These findings demonstrate that gossip, as a potent form of social affective learning, can influence vision in a completely top-down manner, independent of the basic structural features of a face.

She's Emotional. He's Having a Bad Day: Attributional Explanations for Emotion Stereotypes

People believe that women are the more emotional sex. This belief stems less from what men and women actually do than from the explanations given for their behaviors. In 2 studies, participants who were given situational information about the causes of emotional expression in target faces nonetheless more frequently judged feminine targets depicting emotions as emotional (i.e., a dispositional attribution for the emotional behavior), whereas they more frequently judged masculine targets as having a bad day (i.e., a situational attribution for the emotional behavior). These findings help explain the pervasive belief that women are more emotional when compared with men, even when the scientific veracity of this belief is questionable.

Individual Differences in Learning the Affective Value of Others Under Minimal Conditions

This paper provides the first demonstration that people can learn about the positive and negative value of other people (e.g., neutral faces) under minimal learning conditions, with stable individual differences in this learning. In four studies, participants viewed neutral faces paired with sentences describing positive, negative or neutral behaviors on either two (Study 1) or four (Studies 2, 3, and 4) occasions. Participants were later asked to judge the valence of the faces alone. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that learning does occur under minimal conditions. Study 3 and 4 further demonstrated that the degree of learning was moderated by Extraversion. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that initial learning persisted over a period of 2 days. Implications for affective processing and person perception are discussed.