How ‘hot’ emotional brain interferes with ‘cool’ processing
February 16, 2006 | Source: KurzweilAI
For the first time, researchers have seen in action how the “hot” emotional centers of the brain can interfere with “cool” cognitive processes such as those involved in memory tasks.
The Duke University Medical Center researchers’ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) images of human volunteers exposed to emotional distraction revealed a “see-saw” effect, in which activation of emotional centers damped activity in the “executive” centers responsible for such processing.
The findings provide insight into the basic brain mechanisms responsible for the distraction caused by emotional stimuli that are irrelevant to a task.
Moreover, they said, the findings offer a new approach to understanding how people with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder cope with traumatic events and memories. It is known that people with such problems are far more affected by emotional distraction.