Trends in cognitive sciences
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Advances in neuroscience, technology and research sophistication have greatly increased understanding of mental illnesses and improved the treatment of these disorders. However, there are also important psychosocial aspects of mental illness that play a significant role in recovery from these conditions. One set of these factors involves the prejudice and discrimination, often referred to as 'stigma', faced by people when others learn that they have been diagnosed with, and/or treated for, a mental disorder.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Dec 2011
ReviewPsychobiological allostasis: resistance, resilience and vulnerability.
The brain and body need to adapt constantly to changing social and physical environments. A key mechanism for this adaptation is the 'stress response', which is necessary and not negative in and of itself. ⋯ In the context of allostasis, resilience denotes the ability of an organism to respond to stressors in the environment by means of the appropriate engagement and efficient termination of allostatic responses. In this review, we discuss the neurobiological and organismal factors that modulate resilience, such as growth factors, chaperone molecules and circadian rhythms, and highlight its consequences for cognition and behavior.
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Perceiving others' minds is a crucial component of social life. People do not, however, always ascribe minds to other people, and sometimes ascribe minds to non-people (e.g. God, gadgets). ⋯ Mind perception also has profound consequences for both the perceiver and perceived. Ascribing mind confers an entity moral rights and also makes its actions meaningful. Understanding the causes and consequences of mind perception can explain when this most social of cognitive skills will be used, and why it matters.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · May 2009
Reason, emotion and decision-making: risk and reward computation with feeling.
Many models of judgment and decision-making posit distinct cognitive and emotional contributions to decision-making under uncertainty. Cognitive processes typically involve exact computations according to a cost-benefit calculus, whereas emotional processes typically involve approximate, heuristic processes that deliver rapid evaluations without mental effort. However, it remains largely unknown what specific parameters of uncertain decision the brain encodes, the extent to which these parameters correspond to various decision-making frameworks, and their correspondence to emotional and rational processes. Here, I review research suggesting that emotional processes encode in a precise quantitative manner the basic parameters of financial decision theory, indicating a reorientation of emotional and cognitive contributions to risky choice.