Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling

Abstract

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes – offering a common language for psychological and neurobiological models. After identifying some limitations of mainstream emotion theory, I apply DS principles to emotion–cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. These mechanisms include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes.

Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation

“…In the end, when one delineates the full range of subcomponents that modulate cognition/emotion interactions over multiple timescales, one may conclude that there is at no stage a 'pure' emotional response that is not always already regulated in some way. Not only may it be impossible to distinguish 'emotional' from 'cognitive' processes in the brain [15,16], it may be extremely rare to find pure emotional reactivity unregulated by some form of attentional process. Nonetheless, we suggest that an inclusive view of emotion regulation continues to serve as a useful heuristic for understanding behavioral and attentional processes that modulate emotion.…”

“…The extended model of emotion regulation (EMER) is a synthetic model, drawing on developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, which is contextualized within a dynamic view of cognition/emotion processes in the brain [15]. Drawing on Gross' influential process model [2], we divide emotion regulation strategies into those that modulate emotional responses either before or after an emotionally salient event ( Figure 1, x axis).…”

“…According to the extended model, emotional interpretations involve the continuous unfolding of dynamical cognition-emotion interactions implicated in evaluation of events and regulation of responses to them at both psychological and neuronal levels [15]. In real time, over milliseconds to minutes, and in developmental time, over the course of years, increasingly effortful strategies draw on cycles of reprocessing of evaluative information into more complex hierarchical networks [72].…”

“…Given that affect-biased attention is deployed habitually with the ongoing goal of modulating a habitually anticipated emotion (e.g., anxiety), it is regulatory in precisely this way. Nevertheless, from a dynamic perspective that emphasizes the ongoing unfolding of cognitive/emotional processes [15][16][17], 'emotion regulation' is not a process in its own right, but a useful heuristic, one that helps to delineate a taxonomy of cognition-emotion subcomponents [2]. Affect-biased attention is one of these subcomponents that modulate emotional responses at multiple temporal scales.…”

Emotion: The self-regulatory sense

“…237 Indeed, since this ancient regulatory pattern is so fundamental, the three main steps in the feedback cycle are reflected in globally complex nested loops of the triune brain, each integrating particular emotion and appraisal processes. 238 These include a "motivated monitoring loop" (linking the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), hippocampus (HPC), amygdala (AM), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the brain stem/basal forebrain (BS/BFB); the "motivated object evaluation loop" (linking the OFC, AM, and BS/ BFB with the sensory cortices); and the "motivated action loop" (between the OFC, AM, nucleus accumbens (NAS), ventral pallidum (VP), the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the thalamus; where, respectively, the ongoing comparisons, signaling and the corrective actions occur.…”