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1.
Introduction
In The Cognitive-Emotional Brain (Pessoa 2013), I describe how emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain. I believe that brain research has been ill-served by the dichotomization of large concepts like cognition and emotion. Further, strict a priori definitions of these concepts fuel dichotomization. We need a vocabulary that views concepts as complementary pairs that mutually define each other and, critically, do not exclude each other. As in the book, I will not define here terms such as emotion, motivation, and cognition; they will be used descriptively to refer to paradigms, task conditions, or "processes" that are closer to the traditional intended meanings of these terms. The book is aimed at students and investigators interested in the brain basis of emotion, especially those interested in understanding how perception and cognition reflect and embed affective/motivational significance. The book integrates findings from nonhuman animal research and human imaging research, the latter being the area my research focuses on.
The structure of this précis is as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews issues covered in chapters 2-4 of the book, which propose how to conceptualize amygdala function in broader terms than typically adopted in the field, and argue against the notion of the "automaticity of emotion." Sections 3-6 focus on chapters 5-7 of the book, which describe how cognitive-emotional/motivational interactions and integration take place in the brain. Section 7 addresses the general issue of structure-function mapping in the brain. There, I argue for a "network" view of brain function but also describe several problems with this view that are underappreciated in the literature. Potential tools to characterize complex structure-function mappings are described. Finally, in Section 8, I draw some conclusions of the network perspective to the understanding of emotion and the brain.
2.
Amygdala and the automaticity of emotion
2.1.
Amygdala
Chapter 2 discusses the ever-important amygdala and its role in brain function. Based on rodent and human data, I describe how the amygdala's functions go beyond emotion as traditionally conceived, reflecting a trend toward viewing this structure not simply in terms of "fear."
A key function of the amygdala is to shape selective information processing. Selection of information for further analysis is, of course, a central problem that needs to...