Mind and muscle: the cognitive-affective neuroscience of exercise

There is growing basic-science interest in the mechanisms underpinning the positive effects of exercise on brain function and cognitive-affective performance. There is also increasing clinical evidence that exercise may prevent and treat various neuropsychiatric disorders. At the same time, there is growing awareness that athletic performance is mediated in crucial ways by central nervous system mechanisms. The relevant mechanisms in all these cases requires further exploration, but likely includes neurotrophic, neuroendocrine, and neurotransmitter systems, which in turn are crucial mediators of psychopathology and resilience. The hypothesis that Homo sapiens evolved as a specialist endurance runner provides an intriguing context against which to research the proximal mechanisms relevant to a cognitive-affective neuroscience of exercise.     

The unconscious and consciousness of the memory: A contribution from neuroscience

Abstract

By integrating data from general psychology and perinatal clinical psychology with neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the author discusses the relations between memory and consciousness, the aim being a unitary definition of the concept of unconscious. Nobody has a brain that can be the same as any other person's: the biology of memory lies in neural networks that have been constructed in the brain of that specific person by their experience. From the fetal stage, each brain progressively learns its own individual functions during its relational neuropsychic development. The author underlines how the continuous emotional biological work of the brain, together with a person's entire relational life, produces the construction of the whole functional and individual mindbrain. The whole construction is memory and this is unconscious; indeed it may be the true unconscious. From the continuous silent work of the mindbrain of a person, some forms of conscious level may emerge in his individual's subjectivity: some functioning of mindbrain makes what an individual person can consciously remember. The unconscious is only what appears in some form in an analyst's consciousness, at some specific moment in his relationship with a patient, and which the analyst translates into some form of his verbal interpretation.     

Using computational neuroscience to investigate the neural correlates of cognitive-affective integration during covert decision making

We presented a proposed neural level mechanism for the integration of cognitive and affective information during covert decision making. The central idea is that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex establishes predicted outcomes of responses through its connections with the amygdala, and that this information is passed through the context-moderated gateway in the nucleus accumbens in order to promote behaviours that are most beneficial to the long term survival of the organism. We then implemented the proposed mechanism in a network of spiking neurons, and tested one of its central claims. Results showed that the model was capable of producing behaviour similar to that observed in normal humans, as well as that exhibited during VMPFC damage.     

The half-life of cognitive-affective states during complex learning

We investigated the temporal dynamics of students' cognitive-affective states (confusion, frustration, boredom, engagement/flow, delight, and surprise) during deep learning activities. After a learning session with an intelligent tutoring system with conversational dialogue, the cognitive-affective states of the learner were classified by the learner, a peer, and two trained judges at approximately 100 points in the tutorial session. Decay rates for the cognitive-affective states were estimated by fitting exponential curves to time series of affect responses. The results partially confirmed predictions of goal-appraisal theories of emotion by supporting a tripartite classification of the states along a temporal dimension: persistent states (boredom, engagement/flow, and confusion), transitory states (delight and surprise), and an intermediate state (frustration). Patterns of decay rates were generally consistent across affect judges, except that a reversed actor-observer effect was discovered for engagement/flow and frustration. Correlations between decay rates of the cognitive-affective states and several learning measures confirmed the major predictions and uncovered some novel findings that have implications for theories of pedagogy that integrate cognition and affect during deep learning.     

The screen function of unconscious fantasy

Although being a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis, fantasy is an ambiguous term. It covers a vast field of conscious and unconscious phenomena, from daydreaming, the manifest narration of the patient’s world of imagination to unconscious fantasy and primal fantasy. Further, it introduces the delicate alternatives of imaginary versus real, subject versus object and internal versus external. Following Freud’s reflections on the ambiguity of fantasy, we arrive at an idea introduced by Freud himself, but elaborated years later by Lacan. Fantasy, accordingly, is seen as a screen which both reveals and conceals. Our aim is to demonstrate, theoretical as well as clinical, how unconscious fantasy serves as a window into not only repressed wishes and conflicts, but also the most primary scenes where the subject may not even have a specific place. Simultaneously, it is the site of protection and defence, including projection and denial, but also repetition of what we will call the identical. A clinical case will be presented to illustrate our theoretical ideas and their clinical implications.     

The cognitive neuroscience of creativity

This article outlines a framework of creativity based on functional neuroanatomy. Recent advances in the field of cognitive neuroscience have identified distinct brain circuits that are involved in specific higher brain functions. To date, these findings have not been applied to research on creativity. It is proposed that there are four basic types of creative insights, each mediated by a distinctive neural circuit. By definition, creative insights occur in consciousness. Given the view that the working memory buffer of the prefrontal cortex holds the content of consciousness, each of the four distinctive neural loops terminates there. When creativity is the result of deliberate control, as opposed to spontaneous generation, the prefrontal cortex also instigates the creative process. Both processing modes, deliberate and spontaneous, can guide neural computation in structures that contribute emotional content and in structures that provide cognitive analysis, yielding the four basic types of creativity. Supportive evidence from psychological, cognitive, and neuroscientific studies is presented and integrated in this article. The new theoretical framework systematizes the interaction between knowledge and creative thinking, and how the nature of this relationship changes as a function of domain and age. Implications for the arts and sciences are briefly discussed.