The neural and cognitive mechanisms of adaptive and maladaptive emotion-behaviour interactions in naturalistic tasks

Introduction

Deciding what to do when for how long – self-organizing one’s behaviour – is an important feature of daily life. Emotions arise providing short-cuts for the computational complexities. Yet, we still know relatively little about the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. EMOBB will establish the computational, cognitive and neural underpinnings of the rich interplay between emotions and self-organized behaviour in naturalistic environments overcoming three key challenges.

Challenge 1: Measurement of Self-Organized Behaviour

First, previous work has almost exclusively relied on tasks structured into experimenter-determined trials – thus how people self-organized behaviour could not be measured. To overcome this, EMOBB will combine novel naturalistic tasks in which people have freedom what to do when for how long with subjective and objective measures of emotions.

This will be made possible through a computational modelling approach that allows dissecting and quantifying even complex behaviour-emotion interactions.

Challenge 2: Relevance to Real-Life Cognition

Second, many previous decision-making tasks have limited relevance for real-life cognition and individual differences. EMOBB will address this by relating the computational task measures to individual differences in real-life behaviours and emotional traits.

This effort will culminate in the creation of a video game platform providing a large population benchmark.

Challenge 3: Causal Role of Brain Networks

Third, brain imaging has primarily relied on correlations, often focusing on individual regions. EMOBB will go beyond this by testing the causal role of brain networks and their shifting compositions to cognitive state changes, combining functional magnetic resonance brain imaging and non-invasive ultrasound brain stimulation.

Conclusion

While the challenges are important by themselves, combining all aspects in one project will allow a breakthrough in our understanding across all levels from neural underpinning to individual differences. Specifically, it will deliver a model of naturalistic emotion-behaviour interplay and its mediating brain mechanisms.