Relational and affective neuroscience: a quiet revolution in psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 356-366
Author(s):  
C. Susan Mizen ◽  
John Hook
Keyword(s):  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Quiet Revolution ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Practice ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Predictive Processes ◽  
The Brain

SUMMARYWe consider some advances in relational and affective neuroscience and related disciplines that attempt to resolve some fundamental aspects of the mind–brain problem. We consider the key role of affect in generating consciousness and in meeting our essential survival needs; the neural correlates of relating; how self and other are represented in the brain and awareness of self and other is generated through interoceptive predictive processes. We describe some leading models of the generation and purpose of consciousness, linking theories of affective and cognitive consciousness. We discuss psychiatric and psychotherapeutic innovations arising from this research, new integrated biopsychosocial interventions and the obstacles to be overcome in applying these models in practice.

The Advancement of Neuroimaging Research Investigating Developmental Stuttering

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deryk S. Beal
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Fast Rate ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Current State ◽  
Developmental Stuttering ◽  
The Brain ◽  
State Of The Field

We are amassing information about the role of the brain in speech production and the potential neural limitations that coincide with developmental stuttering at a fast rate. As such, it is difficult for many clinician-scientists who are interested in the neural correlates of stuttering to stay informed of the current state of the field. In this paper, I aim to inspire clinician-scientists to tackle hypothesis-driven research that is grounded in neurobiological theory. To this end, I will review the neuroanatomical structures, and their functions, which are implicated in speech production and then describe the relevant differences identified in these structures in people who stutter relative to their fluently speaking peers. I will conclude the paper with suggestions on directions of future research to facilitate the evolution of the field of neuroimaging of stuttering.

Unveiling the Cognitive Mechanisms of Eyes

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingxu Wang
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Brain Science ◽  
Internal Memory ◽  
Cognitive Knowledge ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Eyes as the unique organ possess intensively direct connections to the brain and dynamically perceptual accessibility to the mind. This paper analyzes the cognitive mechanisms of eyes not only as the sensory of vision, but also the browser of internal memory in thinking and perception. The browse function of eyes is created by abstract conditioning of the eye's tracking pathway for accessing internal memories, which enables eye movements to function as the driver of the perceptive thinking engine of the brain. The dual mechanisms of the eyes as both the external sensor of the brain and the internal browser of the mind are explained based on evidences and cognitive experiences in cognitive informatics, neuropsychology, cognitive science, and brain science. The finding on the experiment's internal browsing mechanism of eyes reveals a crucial role of eyes interacting with the brain for accessing internal memory and the cognitive knowledge base in thinking, perception, attention, consciousness, learning, memorization, and inference.

Neuroimaging of Emotion Dysregulation

2018 ◽  
pp. 181-201
Author(s):  
Joseph C. Leshin ◽  
Kristen A. Lindquist
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Clinical Fmri ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Experienced Emotion ◽  
The Brain

Affective neuroscience, the study of neural mechanisms that give rise to emotional experiences in humans and animals, has a short but rich history. Almost three decades old, affective neuroscience has predominantly taken two theoretical approaches to understanding the brain bases of human emotions, and thus, two stances on the brain bases of emotion dysregulation. One approach, the traditional approach, argues that specific emotions are hardwired in human biology with specific neural underpinnings or signatures for said emotions. The second approach, a psychological constructionist approach, argues that each experienced emotion emerges not from a specific, dedicated anatomical circuit, but from an interplay of broad networks in the brain that are involved in general operations of the mind. This chapter provides an overview of these two theoretical approaches with a specific focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings. It concludes with evidence suggesting how emotion dysregulation may arise and links this work to clinical fMRI investigations of anxiety disorders. It closes by suggesting future directions affective neuroscience may take to better understand processes underlying dysregulated emotions.

scholarly journals Making Enactivism Even More Embodied

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Sensory Motor ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

An enactivist approach to understanding the mind, in its fullest sense, is not just a matter of action-oriented processes; enactivism is about more than action and sensory–motor contingencies. To understand cognition as richly embodied this chapter considers factors involving affectivity and intersubjectivity. Empirical studies show that affectivity, in a wide sense that includes hunger, fatigue, pain, respiration, as well as emotion, has an effect on perception, attention, and judgment. Likewise, intersubjective factors, including the role of bodily postures, movements, gestures, gaze and facial expressions, and dynamical aspects of interaction, have similar effects. This richer conception of embodied cognition also holds implications for understanding how the brain works.

Minding the Emotional Thermostat

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan T. Denny ◽  
Kevin N. Ochsner
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Affect Dysregulation ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Regulation Of Emotion ◽  
The Brain

This chapter takes a social cognitive affective neuroscience approach to describe the processes and systems to give rise to emotion and the volitional control of emotion. It provides a detailed description of the processes that underlie the regulation of emotion. It introduces and synthesizes the brain structures involved in emotion processing and regulation. There is a particular focus on the role of the ventrolateral, dorsolateral and dorsomedial prefrtonal cortex, amgydala, ventral striatum and insula, and on cognitive strategies such as reappraisal. It provides a critical framework for understanding the underlying behavioral and neural basis for the affect dysregulation observed across personality disorders, and summarizes future directions for this area of investigation.

Enactivist Interventions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
Relational Dynamics ◽  
Close Coupling ◽  
Affective Processes ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Enactivist Interventions explores central issues in the contemporary debates about embodied cognition, addressing interdisciplinary questions about intentionality, representation, affordances, the role of affect, and the problems of perception and cognitive penetration, action and free will, higher-order cognition, and intersubjectivity. It argues for a rethinking of the concept of mind, drawing on pragmatism, phenomenology, and cognitive science. It interprets enactivism as a philosophy of nature that has significant methodological and theoretical implications for the scientific investigation of the mind. Enactivist Interventions argues that, like the basic phenomena of perception and action, sophisticated cognitive phenomena like reflection, imagining, and mathematical reasoning are best explained in terms of an affordance-based skilled coping. It thus argues for a continuity that runs between basic action, affectivity, and a rationality that in every case remains embodied. It also discusses recent predictive models of brain function and outlines an alternative, enactivist interpretation that emphasizes the close coupling of brain, body, and environment rather than a strong boundary that isolates the brain in its internal processes. The extensive relational dynamics that integrates the brain with the extra-neural body opens into an environment that is physical, social, and cultural and that recycles back into the enactive process. Cognitive processes are in the world, situated in affordance spaces defined across evolutionary, developmental, and individual histories, and are constrained by affective processes and normative dimensions of social and cultural practices.

Natural Brains and Motivated, Emotional Mind

2021 ◽  
pp. 82-138
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Evolutionary Development ◽  
Synaptic Coupling ◽  
Subjective Character ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

We know that the brain is the seat of the mind. Constructing the reductive model of the conscious mind requires an indication of the laws according to which the mind emerges from biophysical processes occurring in natural brains. Because in Part I, the authors presented the theoretical model referring to the ideal structures of the imagined neural network, we now have easier task, because we need to indicate in the brains of the living beings those processes that functionally correspond to our postulates. Such suitability is not guaranteed by known processes occurring in specialized parts of the brain. The role of the primary sensory areas is a detailed analysis of sensory stimuli with specific modality. They result in analysis of the meaning of all useful stimuli and their interpretation used in various parts of the cortex. The high specialization of individual cortex areas is striking and are the result of evolutionary development of the brain. New brain structures, such as the new cortex, were added on the outskirts of existing structures, improving their performance in the ever more demanding environments, where other intelligent beings ravened. But even as we know the brain organization, we struggle to understand how it works. How neurons that make the brain work together to create the conscious mind. To discover functionally effective processes in the brain, one need to reach for the biophysical properties of the astrocyt-neural network. In this chapter, the authors suggest that some concepts of neuro-electro-dynamics and the phenomena of neuro- and synapto-genesis as well as synaptic couplings may explain the processes of categorization, generalization and association leading to the formation of extensive, semihierarchical brain structures constituting neural representations of perceptions, objects and phenomena. Natural brains meet the embodiment condition. They are products of evolution, so they have intentionality, their own goals and needs. So they can naturally show emotions, drives and instincts that motivate to act. This determines the nature of constructed mental representations. They are the subject of psychological research, which shows the motivation of pain and pleasure in the field of intelligent activities, as well as the motivation of curiosity and the need for understanding in the domain of propositional and phenomenal consciousness. They describe the way pain is felt in organisms as basic quale. The role of other qualia for “how-it-is-like to feel something” and their subjective character was explained, as well as their interspecies specificity was characterized. In this chapter, the authors present an elementary biophysical phenomenon, that is a flash of consciousness. This phenomenon is synaptic coupling formed in the course of learning. They justify that the stream of such phenomena is the foundation of consciousness. They also point out that the astrocytic-neural network meets all the conditions required to generate conscious sensations.

scholarly journals The Power of Predictions: An Emerging Paradigm for Psychological Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Benjamin Hutchinson ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Predictive Processes ◽  
The Brain

In the last two decades, neuroscience studies have suggested that various psychological phenomena are produced by predictive processes in the brain. When considered together, these studies form a coherent, neurobiologically inspired program for guiding psychological research about the mind and behavior. In this article, we consider the common assumptions and hypotheses that unify an emerging framework and discuss the ramifications of such a framework, both for improving the replicability and robustness of psychological research and for renewing psychological theory by suggesting an alternative ontology of the human mind.

Sensory cortex and the mind-brain problem

1978 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Puccetti ◽  
Robert W. Dykes
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Rule Out

AbstractOne of the implicit, and sometimes explicit, objectives of modern neuroscience is to find neural correlates of subjective experience so that different qualities of that experience might be explained in detail by reference to the physical structure and processes of the brain. It is generally assumed that such explanations will make unnecessary or rule out any reference to conscious mental agents. This is the classic mind-brain reductivist program. We have chosen to challenge the optimism underlying such an approach in the context of sensory neurophysiology and sensory experience. Specifically, we ask if it is possible to explain the subjective differences among seeing, hearing, and feeling something by inspecting the structure and function of primary visual, auditory, and somesthetic cortex.After reviewing the progress in localization of sensory functions over the past two centuries and examining some aspects of the structure and function of somesthetic, auditory, and visual cortex, we infer that one cannot explain the subjective differences between sensory modalities in terms of present day neuroscientific knowledge. Nor do present trends in research provide grounds for optimism.At this point we turn to three philosophical theories to see what promise they hold of explaining these differences. A brief discussion of each – identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism – suggests that none adequately accounts for the facts of the situation, and we tentatively conclude that some form of dualism is still a tenable hypothesis.

scholarly journals Why Quantum Correlates of Consciousness Are Fine, But Not Enough

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Vaas
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Measurement Problem ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
Naturalistic Theory ◽  
Quantum Phenomena ◽  
The Mind

The existence of quantum correlates of consciousness (QCC) is doubtful from a scientific perspective. But even if their existence were verified, philosophical problems would remain. On the other hand, there could be more to QCC than meets the sceptic's eye: • QCC might be useful or even necessary for a better understanding of conscious experience or quantum physics or both. The main reasons for this are: the measurement problem (the nature of observation, the mysterious collapse of the wave function, etc.), ostensibly shared features of quantum phenomena and conscious phenomena (e.g., complementarity, nonspatiality, acausality, spontaneity, and holism) and connections (ontology, causation, and knowledge), the qualia problem (subjectivity, explanatory gap etc.). But there are many problems, especially questions regarding realism and the nature and role of conscious observers; • QCC are conceptually challenging, because there are definitory problems and some crucial ontological and epistemological shortcomings. It is instructive to compare them with recent proposals for understanding neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). QCC are not sufficient for a quantum theory of mind, nor might they be necessary except perhaps in a very broad sense; • QCC are also empirically challenging. Nevertheless, QCC could be relevant and important for the mindbody problem: QCC might reveal features that are necessary at least for behavioral manifestations of human consciousness. But QCC are compatible with very different proposals for a solution of the mind-body problem. This seems to be both advantageous and detrimental. QCC restrict accounts of nomological identity. The discovery of QCC cannot establish a naturalistic theory of mind alone. But there are also problems with QCC in the framework of other ontologies.

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