Cognition, emotion, and the central autonomic network, 2022, Quadt et al

Cognition, emotion, and the central autonomic network

Lisa Quadt, HugoCritchley, YokoNagai

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1566070222000078?dgcid=coauthor

Abstract

The demands of both mental and physical activity are integrated with the dynamic control of internal bodily states.

The set of neural interactions that supports autonomic regulation extends beyond afferent-efferent homeostatic reflexes (interoceptive feedback, autonomic action) to encompass allostatic policies reflecting more abstract and predictive mental representations, often accessed as conscious thoughts and feelings.

Historically and heuristically, reason is contrasted with passion, cognition with emotion, and ‘cold’ with ‘hot’ cognition. These categories are themselves arbitrary and blurred.

Investigations of psychological processes have been generally pursued during states of musculoskeletal quiescence and are thus relatively insensitive to autonomic interaction with attentional, perceptual, mnemonic and decision-making processes.

Autonomic psychophysiology has nevertheless highlighted the bidirectional coupling of distinct cognitive domains to the internal states of bodily arousal.

More powerfully perhaps, in the context of emotion, autonomically mediated changes in inner bodily physiological states are viewed as intrinsic constituents of the expression of emotions, while their feedback representation is proposed to underpin emotional and motivational feelings.

Here, we review the brain systems, encapsulated by the notion of central autonomic network, that provide the interface between cognitive, emotional and autonomic state.

These systems span the neuraxis, overlap with the more general governance of behaviour, and represent district levels of proximity to survival-related imperatives.

We touch upon the conceptual relevance of prediction and surprise to understanding the integration of cognition and emotion with autonomic control.

[sentences paragraphed for readability] Full paper at link

 

Wow, those sure are a bunch of words which I'm sure are organized in some manner or another. Kind of like the linguistic version of ink blots. Or how you can find a boat in those images you have to squint at.

Damn, I was hoping to give some slack by assuming the authors surely must be lost in poor translation, but, nope, it's from the UK. Academia really has to deal with this "I am so smart" approach of using dense but unintelligible verbiage, this is way more convoluted than it has to be.

 

The abstract certainly doesn't entice me into reading the full article. It sounds like they didn't find anything new, so they put their efforts into making it look impressive, or at least to intimidate readers into not asking questions.

 

I’m not sure that’s fair. A lot of papers are written for a very small community of practitioners who share the same terms of reference. That doesn’t mean that the authors are deliberately trying to exclude muggles, or to show off to them, or to obscure a lack of real insight. It just means that there’s little to be gained for a lay reader.

When we know that the community of practice involved has some dodgy shared assumptions, as with MUS and somatic symptoms literature, it’s reasonable to critique the papers they have written for their colleagues, and attack specific premises.

But it’s really a bit Daily Mail to pick on some innocent neuroscientists just because their professional terminology is a bit abstruse.