Integrating emotional states into mental representations of the environment

• Applicant: Dr. Kathrin Müsch
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289262889

Emotions are essential to our ability to effectively understand situations in the world. Such situations can be described as a combination of agents and goals, and the neural representation of a situation is called a situation model. Emotional processes involve a combination of internal affect and external sensation that is continually updated in the context of conceptual knowledge and situational understanding. Functional neuroimaging has identified sites in the temporal, frontomedial and posterior medial cortex to be crucial for representing semantic, emotional aspects of situation models. However, it remains unclear how the neural circuitry of emotion shapes the situation model. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and intracranial electrical recordings, the goal of this project is to (i) identify the key regions or pathways by which emotional information modulate situation models and (ii) to investigate the systems and circuit-level process by which information flows from emotional to situational representations. To do so, participants will vividly imagine themselves in scenarios evoked by auditory stimuli. We will employ context manipulations such that identical auditory stimuli can describe different scenarios and elicit different emotional states. These will be contrasted with meaningless sentences that prevent the formation of a coherent situation model and thus the successful integration of emotional information. We propose that inter-regional communication in the theta band (5-7 Hz) supports the integration of emotional information into the situation model between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. This project helps us to explain, from moment to moment, the degree to which our cognitive appraisals of situations are being affected by emotional factors.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Canada
• Host: Professor Dr. Christopher Honey