Predictive processing models and affective neuroscience

2021 ◽  
Vol 131 ◽  
pp. 211-228
Author(s):  
Kent M. Lee ◽  
Fernando Ferreira-Santos ◽  
Ajay B. Satpute
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina G. Vilas ◽  
Lucia Melloni

Abstract To become a unifying theory of brain function, predictive processing (PP) must accommodate its rich representational diversity. Gilead et al. claim such diversity requires a multi-process theory, and thus is out of reach for PP, which postulates a universal canonical computation. We contend this argument and instead propose that PP fails to account for the experiential level of representations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Laukkonen ◽  
Heleen A Slagter

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many- to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes available to introspection, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Burns ◽  
Matthew D. Lieberman

Social and affective neuroscience studies the neurophysiological underpinnings of psychological experience and behavior as it relates to the world around us. Yet, most neuroimaging methods require the removal of participants from their rich environment and the restriction of meaningful interaction with stimuli. In this Tools of the Trade article, we explain functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a neuroimaging method that can address these concerns. First, we provide an overview of how fNIRS works and how it compares to other neuroimaging methods common in social and affective neuroscience. Next, we describe fNIRS research that highlights its usefulness to the field – when rich stimuli engagement or environment embedding is needed, studies of social interaction, and examples of how it can help the field become more diverse and generalizable across participant populations. Lastly, this article describes how to use fNIRS for neuroimaging research with points of advice that are particularly relevant to social and affective neuroscience studies.


Author(s):  
Lauren Swiney

Over the last thirty years the comparator hypothesis has emerged as a prominent account of inner speech pathology. This chapter discusses a number of cognitive accounts broadly derived from this approach, highlighting the existence of two importantly distinct notions of inner speech in the literature; one as a prediction in the absence of sensory input, the other as an act with sensory consequences that are themselves predicted. Under earlier frameworks in which inner speech is described in the context of classic models of motor control, I argue that these two notions may be compatible, providing two routes to inner speech pathology. Under more recent accounts grounded in the architecture of Bayesian predictive processing, I argue that “active inference” approaches to action generation pose serious challenges to the plausibility of the latter notion of inner speech, while providing the former notion with rich explanatory possibilities for inner speech pathology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Marengo ◽  
Kenneth L. Davis ◽  
Gökçe Özkarar Gradwohl ◽  
Christian Montag

AbstractThe Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) were constructed as a self-report assessment to measure individual differences in Jaak Panksepp’s cross-species primary emotional systems: SEEKING, PLAY, CARE (positive emotions) and FEAR, SADNESS, ANGER (negative emotions). Beginning with the first published work on the ANPS in 2003, individual differences on the ANPS measures of these six primary emotional systems have been consistently linked to Big Five personality traits. From a theoretical perspective, these primary emotional systems arising from subcortical regions, shed light on the nature of the Big Five personality traits from an evolutionary perspective, because each of these primary emotional systems represent a tool for survival endowing mammalian species with inherited behavioral programs to react appropriately to complex environments. The present work revisited 21 available samples where both ANPS and Big Five measures have been administered. Our meta-analytical analysis provides solid evidence that high SEEKING relates to high Openness to Experience, high PLAY to high Extraversion, high CARE/low ANGER to high Agreeableness and high FEAR/SADNESS/ANGER to high Neuroticism. This seems to be true regardless of the ANPS inventory chosen, although much more work is needed in this area. Associations between primary emotional systems and Conscientiousness were in the lower effect size area across all six primary emotions, thereby supporting the idea that Conscientiousness rather seems to be less directly related with the subcortical primary emotions and likely is the most cognitive/cortical personality construct out of the Big Five. In sum, the present work underlines the idea that individual differences in primary emotional systems represent evolutionarily ancient foundations of human personality, given their a) meaningful links to the prominent Big Five model and b) their origins lying in subcortical areas of the human brain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Sanwald ◽  
◽  
Katharina Widenhorn-Müller ◽  
Carlos Schönfeldt-Lecuona ◽  
Christian Montag ◽  
...  

Abstract Background An early onset of depression is associated with higher chronicity and disability, more stressful life events (SLEs), higher negative emotionality as described by the primary emotion SADNESS and more severe depressive symptomatology compared to depression onset later in life. Additionally, methylation of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) is associated with SLEs and depressive symptoms. Methods We investigated the relation of SLEs, SLC6A4 methylation in peripheral blood, the primary emotions SADNESS and SEEKING (measured by the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales) as well as depressive symptom severity to age at depression onset in a sample of N = 146 inpatients suffering from major depression. Results Depressed women showed higher SADNESS (t (91.05) = − 3.17, p = 0.028, d = − 0.57) and higher SLC6A4 methylation (t (88.79) = − 2.95, p = 0.02, d = − 0.55) compared to men. There were associations between SLEs, primary emotions and depression severity, which partly differed between women and men. The Akaike information criterion (AIC) indicated the selection of a model including sex, SLEs, SEEKING and SADNESS for the prediction of age at depression onset. SLC6A4 methylation was not related to depression severity, age at depression onset or SLEs in the entire group, but positively related to depression severity in women. Conclusions Taken together, we provide further evidence that age at depression onset is associated with SLEs, personality and depression severity. However, we found no associations between age at onset and SLC6A4 methylation. The joint investigation of variables originating in biology, psychology and psychiatry could make an important contribution to understanding the development of depressive disorders by elucidating potential subtypes of depression.


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