Chairs: Alison Mary (ULB) and Charline Urbain (ULB) Research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience evidence that emotion and cognition are closely interconnected. Emotion exerts a strong influence on our behavior and cognitive processes, serving as powerful cues that motivate action, facilitate learning, and guide decision making. Conversely, cognitive processes play a pivotal role in shaping our emotional experience and response. This symposium aims to showcase recent research shedding light on how emotional and rewarded stimuli impact various aspects of cognition, from goal-directed behavior to memory consolidation. The first talk will explore how the predictability of emotional stimuli influences goal-directed avoidance behavior. The second talk will examine the overlapping and distinct influences of motivational and emotional stimuli in various task contexts to unravel how these stimuli shape our behavioral responses. The third talk will focus on how sleep selectively reactivates rewarded memories and enhances their consolidation. The symposium seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of emotions on cognitive functions, offering valuable insights for both theoretical frameworks and clinical applications.
The effect of outcome predictability on social threat avoidance in virtual reality Rocco Mennella (presenting), Jade Serfaty, Matteo Sequestro, Julie Grèzes Human social behavior involves interactions with potentially threatening individuals, which elicit a spectrum of responses from automatic reactions to deliberate, goal-directed actions. The brain's selection among these possible responses hinges on the perceived control over outcomes. When control is minimal, individuals tend to rely on simple stimulus-response associations; however, when control is perceived to be higher, more sophisticated goal-directed actions come into play. In a series of three studies, we delved into how the predictability of outcomes influences the avoidance of angry individuals within a virtual reality setting. Participants (N = 150) were asked to choose between two elevators, each containing avatars displaying either neutral or angry expressions. In conditions where outcomes were predictable, the avatar remained, while in unpredictable conditions, new avatars entered displaying either neutral or angry expressions, randomly. Findings indicated an increase in avoidance of the angry avatar when outcomes were predictable, which was explained computationally by a more efficient evidence accumulation. Additionally, cardiac deceleration before choice was more pronounced under predictable conditions and was associated with better incorporation of value into choice. These results underscore the prevalence of goal-directed avoidance behavior when outcomes are perceived to be foreseeable. These results carry implications for both theoretical frameworks of behavior and clinical practices, deepening our understanding of social threat avoidance and its underlying mechanisms.
Exploring the common affective coding of emotional and motivational stimuli in cognition and action Ruth Krebs (presenting), Vincent Hoofs, Haeme RP Park, Julie M Hall Both motivational and emotional stimuli exhibit strong influences on cognitive processes and our actions. Yet, in the lab, these effects have mostly been studied in isolation and based on different experimental paradigms. In this talk, I will present studies that aim to explore overlapping and distinct influences of motivational stimuli (reward/loss cues) and emotional stimuli (positive/negative facial expressions) in different task contexts, including target discrimination, reinforcement learning, and approach-avoid actions. Overall, we see shared influences of reward cues and positive faces, in that these facilitate learning and approach behavior, as well as responses to targets in general. Negative faces and loss cues display a more distinct pattern depending on the task, with slower responses in general, but facilitation in contexts where avoidance actions are required. For some but not all of these tasks we also acquired neuroimaging data. We see shared activity modulations across positive faces and reward cues, as well as across negative faces and loss cues. However, in addition to these shared activity patterns, motivational and emotional stimuli elicit distinct modulations depending on the paradigms and response requirements. These results illustrate a common coding of motivational and emotional stimuli in terms of their global affective connotation, which aligns with inherent behavioral tendencies. Specifically, positive stimuli promote action execution and approach behavior, while negative stimuli can lead to inaction or avoidance behavior. Intriguingly, in the motivational task realm, participants can overcome the inherent avoidance tendencies triggered by loss cues in order to maximize the monetary outcome.
How sleep boosts memories of rewards Virginie Sterpenich (presenting) During sleep, memories are spontaneously reactivated, a process crucial for their consolidation. Given that rewarded experiences are known to be more effectively remembered, we propose that sleep selectively enhances the consolidation of such events. Using functional MRI and a brain decoding approach, we discovered that patterns of brain activity observed during wakeful experiences reemerge during slow-wave sleep. Notably, our findings reveal a higher reactivation of neural patterns associated with rewarded tasks, such as winning in a complex game. Next, we employed intracranial EEG recordings from emotionally responsive brain regions in patients with medically resistant epilepsy. Following exposure to rewarding images paired with sounds during wakefulness, we investigated the reinstatement of these reward-associated memories by replaying the sounds during subsequent sleep. Our results indicate that the reactivation of reward memories during sleep amplifies slow-oscillation and spindle activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, accompanied by heightened theta connectivity between the hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex. Furthermore, our investigation extended to narcoleptic patients, where alterations in brain regions linked to the reward system were observed during gameplay of a rewarded task. Collectively, these findings underscore the role of sleep in providing an optimal state for the spontaneous reactivation and processing of rewarded events, ultimately facilitating their enhanced consolidation in memory.
