Trends in cognitive sciences
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Jun 2007
ReviewBrain, emotion and decision making: the paradigmatic example of regret.
Human decisions cannot be explained solely by rational imperatives but are strongly influenced by emotion. Theoretical and behavioral studies provide a sound empirical basis to the impact of the emotion of regret in guiding choice behavior. ⋯ In turn, these patterns reflect learning based on cumulative emotional experience. Moreover, affective consequences can induce specific mechanisms of cognitive control of the choice processes, involving reinforcement or avoidance of the experienced behavior.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Mar 2006
ReviewNeuroeconomics: cross-currents in research on decision-making.
Despite substantial advances, the question of how we make decisions and judgments continues to pose important challenges for scientific research. Historically, different disciplines have approached this problem using different techniques and assumptions, with few unifying efforts made. ⋯ Economics, in turn, is being increasingly influenced by a multiple-systems approach to decision-making, a perspective strongly rooted in psychology and neuroscience. The integration of these disparate theoretical approaches and methodologies offers exciting potential for the construction of more accurate models of decision-making.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Dec 2005
The neural correlate of (un)awareness: lessons from the vegetative state.
Consciousness has two main components: wakefulness and awareness. The vegetative state is characterized by wakefulness without awareness. ⋯ External stimulation, such as a painful stimulus, still activates 'primary' sensory cortices in these patients but these areas are functionally disconnected from 'higher order' associative areas needed for awareness. Such studies are disentangling the neural correlates of the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state, and have major clinical consequences in addition to empirical importance for the understanding of consciousness.
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Dec 2005
How brains beware: neural mechanisms of emotional attention.
Emotional processes not only serve to record the value of sensory events, but also to elicit adaptive responses and modify perception. Recent research using functional brain imaging in human subjects has begun to reveal neural substrates by which sensory processing and attention can be modulated by the affective significance of stimuli. ⋯ These modulatory effects implement specialized mechanisms of 'emotional attention' that might supplement but also compete with other sources of top-down control on perception. This work should help to elucidate the neural processes and temporal dynamics governing the integration of cognitive and affective influences in attention and behaviour.
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Researchers in thinking and reasoning have proposed recently that there are two distinct cognitive systems underlying reasoning. System 1 is old in evolutionary terms and shared with other animals: it comprises a set of autonomous subsystems that include both innate input modules and domain-specific knowledge acquired by a domain-general learning mechanism. System 2 is evolutionarily recent and distinctively human: it permits abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking, but is constrained by working memory capacity and correlated with measures of general intelligence. These theories essentially posit two minds in one brain with a range of experimental psychological evidence showing that the two systems compete for control of our inferences and actions.