Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 
This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.
This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.Bidirectional regulation of reward, punishment, and arousal by dopamine, the lateral habenula and the rostromedial tegmentum (RMTg)
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Thomas C Jhou, Peter J VentoDopamine (DA) neurons play multiple roles in reward-related behavior,including distinct roles in learning versus performance of reward-seeking, as well as effort-based decision-making and sleep–wake regulation. We review the increasing evidence that a major inhibitory input to DA neurons arising from the rostromedial tegmental nucleus (RMTg) plays a similarly wide range of roles that strikingly oppose multiple DA functions. These roles are in part dependent on excitatory inputs from the lateral habe...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - December 4, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Toward a neurocognitive framework of creative cognition: the role of memory, attention, and cognitive control
Publication date: June 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 27Author(s): Mathias Benedek, Andreas FinkThe investigation of creative cognition is rapidly advancing, driven by important methodological developments related to the modeling and scoring of creative performance, and stimulated by exciting contributions from cognitive neuroscience. Here, we argue that a deeper understanding of this complex cognitive capacity requires defining the role of its constituting neurocognitive functions including memory, attention, and cognitive control. The available evidence from cognitive and neuroscience research...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - December 2, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Pallidal circuits for aversive motivation and learning
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Marcus Stephenson-JonesThe basal ganglia are a group of subcortical nuclei that play a critical role in goal-directed behaviour by setting motivation, adjusting the vigour of actions, and driving reinforcement learning. Detailed knowledge exists of how these nuclei contribute to the different aspects of goal-directed behaviour in the context of reward-seeking, but far less is known about how they work in a framework of avoiding threats. This review will highlight recent work that has begun exploring how the non-motor output of t...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - November 17, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The contribution of the lesion approach to the neuroscience of creative cognition
Publication date: June 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 27Author(s): Marcela P Ovando-Tellez, Theophile Bieth, Matthieu Bernard, Emmanuelle VollePsychological and recent neuroimaging findings indicate that creativity relies on a balance between associative thinking likely supported by the default mode network and cognitive control processes sustained by control-related networks including frontoparietal regions. Exploring patients with brain lesions allows testing this model and ascertaining a more causal link between creative processes and brain systems. Results from the lesion approach provide ar...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - November 16, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Measurement matters: the relationship between methods of scoring the Alternate Uses Task and brain activation
Publication date: June 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 27Author(s): Oshin Vartanian, Erin L Beatty, Ingrid Smith, Sarah Forbes, Emma Rice, Jenna CrockerPerformance on the Alternate Uses Task can be measured using many approaches. The traditional approach involves scoring participants’ output based on indices such as fluency, originality, and flexibility. The subjective approach involves using experts to rate output directly on creativity (or related constructs). The definitional approach involves rating output on novelty and usefulness—the two criteria deemed necessary and jointly sufficient ...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - November 16, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Placebo hypoalgesia: above and beyond expectancy and conditioning
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Chika Okusogu, Luana CollocaPlacebo hypoalgesia provides pain relief for individuals via the expectation of a beneficial or therapeutic outcome, while nocebo hyperalgesia results in increased pain in response to anxious anticipation of harmful outcomes. These forms of placebo pain modulation can be induced through repeated associations, verbal cues, and social interactions. Understanding these methods of pain modulation can provide greater insight into the psychosocial contexts of pain modulation, as well as develop novel approa...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - November 14, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Creativity in and out of (cognitive) control
Publication date: June 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 27Author(s): Evangelia G ChrysikouThe neurobiological mechanisms supporting cognitive regulation during creative thinking have been at the forefront of recent research on creative cognition. This work has revealed tradeoffs between activity in prefrontal executive control systems and posterior or subcortical brain regions, typically thought to comprise the brain’s default mode network. This review will offer a critical summary of the recent literature on the costs and benefits of cognitive control mechanisms for creative thinking, proposing...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - November 11, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Pain And Opioid Systems, Implications In The Opioid Epidemic
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Nicolas Massaly, Jose A MorónPain has a useful protective role; through avoidance learning, it helps to decrease the probability of engaging in tissue-damaging, or otherwise dangerous experiences. In our modern society, the experience of acute post-surgical pain and the development of chronic pain states represent an unnecessary negative outcome. This has become an important health issue as more than 30% of the US population reports experiencing “unnecessary” pain at any given time. Opioid therapies are often efficacious tr...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 31, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Bayesian Learning Models of Pain: A Call to Action
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Abby Tabor, Christopher BurrLearning is fundamentally about action, enabling the successful navigation of a changing and uncertain environment. The experience of pain is central to this process, indicating the need for a change in action so as to mitigate potential threat to bodily integrity. This review considers the application of Bayesian models of learning in pain that inherently accommodate uncertainty and action, which, we shall propose are essential in understanding learning in both acute and persistent cases of pain. (So...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 26, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Threat-related disorders as persistent motivational states of defense
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Felipe Corchs, Daniela SchillerDefensive motivation, broadly defined as the orchestrated optimization of defensive functions, encapsulates core components of threat-related psychopathology. The exact relationship between defensive functions and stress-induced symptoms, however, is not entirely clear. Here we review how some of the most important behavioral and neurological findings related to threat-related disorders — lowering response threshold to threats, facilitated learning and generalization to new threatening cues, redu...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 26, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The role of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in pain-induced aversive motivation
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Masabumi MinamiPain consists of sensory-discriminative and negative-emotional components. The negative-emotional component of pain is closely related to aversive motivation that promotes avoidance behaviors to escape from noxious stimuli and aversive learning to avoid the cue (conditioned stimulus) associated with noxious stimulation. Recent behavioral studies have revealed the brain regions that mediate the negative-emotional component of pain, including the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and bed nucleus of the stria term...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 16, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Central amygdala cells for learning and expressing aversive emotional memories
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Bo LiAnticipatory defensive responses to an aversive or harmful event depend on memories linking the event with the predictive environmental cues. Extensive evidence indicates that the central amygdala is essential for the acquisition and recall of such memories. The evidence came initially from studies that relied on traditional lesion and pharmacological techniques, and recently from studies in which new methodologies were used to target, record and manipulate neuronal activities with improved precision and specificity. In thi...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 13, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Episodic memory and Pavlovian conditioning: ships passing in the night
Publication date: April 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 26Author(s): Joseph E Dunsmoor, Marijn CW KroesResearch on emotional learning and memory is traditionally approached from one of two directions: episodic memory and classical conditioning. These approaches differ substantially in methodology and intellectual tradition. Here, we offer a new approach to the study of emotional memory in humans that involves integrating theoretical knowledge and experimental techniques from these seemingly distinct fields. Specifically, we describe how subtle modifications to traditional Pavlovian conditioning p...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Unveiling artistic minds: case studies of creativity
Publication date: June 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 27Author(s): Karen Chan Barrett, Charles J. LimbResearch on musical creativity and expertise principally relies on cross-sectional or longitudinal experiments comparing groups of subjects (e.g. musicians vs. non-musicians, professional vs. amateur musicians). While this is vital, case studies of individuals may provide valuable insight into the variability underlying real-world creative musical performance and improvisation. We survey recent case study experiments on musical disorders, musical savants, and unique musical abilities as well as ...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Re-examining prominent measures of divergent and convergent creativity
Publication date: June 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 27Author(s): Robert A Cortes, Adam B Weinberger, Richard J Daker, Adam E GreenMuch of creativity research has focused on the constructs of divergent and convergent thinking. In this review, we address key gaps in extant empirical understanding of these constructs and offer suggestions for future research to parse their respective contributions to creative cognition. Furthermore, we consider the construct validity of the psychometric tasks most commonly used to measure these types of thinking: The Alternative Uses Task and the Remote Associate...
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - October 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
