The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortex

Abstract

The detection of conflict between incompatible impulses, thoughts, and actions is a ubiquitous source of motivation across theories of goal-directed action. In this overview, we explore the hypothesis that conflict is emotive, integrating perspectives from affective science and cognitive neuroscience. Initially, we review evidence suggesting that the mental and biological processes that monitor for information processing conflict-particularly those generated by the anterior midcingulate cortex-track the affective significance of conflict and use this signal to motivate increased control. In this sense, variation in control resembles a form of affect regulation in which control implementation counteracts the aversive experience of conflict. We also highlight emerging evidence proposing that states and dispositions associated with acceptance facilitate control by tuning individuals to the emotive nature of conflict, before proposing avenues for future research, including investigating the role of affect in reinforcement learning and decision making.Keywords: emotion; cognitive control; motivation; event-related potentials; negative affect; medial prefrontal cortex;The Emotive Nature of Conflict 3 The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortexMonitoring performance for goal conflicting thoughts, feelings, and behaviours underlies flexible responding in complex, unpredictable environments. During smoking cessation, for example, quickly detecting impulses (e.g., the desire to smoke) or actions (e.g., picking up a cigarette) that conflict with the goal to quit can signal the need to control behaviour, safeguarding goal progress. Beyond unwanted temptations, conflict is evoked across diverse explanatory frameworks, ranging from high-level dissonant states that emerge when individual's hold multiple inconsistent ideologies, to seemingly lower-level conflicts that occur when stimulus dimensions cue mutually incompatible responses (e.g., Stroop conflict).Underscoring the theoretical ubiquity of conflict, detecting and overcoming some internal conflict or discord is fundamental to multiple seminal perspectives in western philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience (e.g

The conflict negativity: Neural correlate of value conflict and indecision during financial decision making

“…Nevertheless, these neural results are consistent with recent suggestions that the aMCC not only detects decision conflicts (Botvinick et al, 2001), but also with suggestions that aMCC tracks negatively valenced events during cognitive control (e.g., Botvinick, 2007;Inzlicht, Bartholow & Hirsh, 2015;Koban & Pourtois, 2014;Shackman et al, 2011) and decision making (e.g., Saunders, Lin, Milyavskaya, & Inzlicht, 2017;Shenhav & Buckner, 2013). To our knowledge, the current results are the first to link the CN to indecision and subjective evaluations that arise during decision making.…”

The conflict negativity: A neural correlate of value conflict and indecision during financial decision making

“…Importantly, the association between reductions in positive affect and CN amplitude should be interpreted with some caution (and merits future replication) given that this effect was not significant at our apriori alpha level (p < .05). Nevertheless and under the assumption that positive and negative affect exist on a continuum (Russel, 2003), these neural results are consistent with recent suggestions that the aMCC not only detects decision conflicts (Botvinick et al, 2001), but also with suggestions that aMCC tracks negatively valenced events during cognitive control (e.g., Botvinick, 2007;Inzlicht, Bartholow & Hirsh, 2015;Koban & Pourtois, 2014;Shackman et al, 2011) and decision making (e.g., Saunders, Lin, Milyavskaya, & Inzlicht, 2017;Shenhav & Buckner, 2013). To our knowledge, the current results are the first to link the CN to indecision and subjective evaluations that arise during decision making.…”

Monitor yourself! Deficient error-related brain activity predicts real-life self-control failures

“…Response conflicts and resulting performance problems have been shown to be inherently aversive (Aarts, De Houwer, & Pourtois, 2012), and this negative affect appears to play a functional role in initiating required adjustments in cognitive control (Dreisbach & Fischer, 2012;Inzlicht et al, 2015;Saunders, Lin, Milyavskaya, & Inzlicht, 2017;Wiswede, Münte, Goschke, & Rüsseler, 2009). This suggests that impaired mobilization of control in self-control situations may reflect a relative inability to process conflict-related aversive states adaptively.…”