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The Adventures of Fundi Intervention Based on the Cognitive and Emotional Processing in Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder Patients
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Published on: June 12, 2020

Emotion, decision making, and the amygdala.

Ben Seymour1, Ray Dolan

  • 1Wellcome Trust Centre for Imaging Neuroscience, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N3BG, UK. bj.seymour@gmail.com

Neuron
|June 14, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Pavlovian processes, not just emotion, significantly influence decision-making and choice. The amygdala plays a key role in this brain mechanism, optimizing economic choices.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Emotion's role in decision-making is widely accepted but poorly understood.
  • Traditional models attribute many choice effects to emotion.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review behavioral and neuroscientific evidence on Pavlovian influences on choice.
  • To propose a neurobiological account of emotion in optimizing economic decisions.

Main Methods:

  • Review of behavioral studies on Pavlovian conditioning and choice.
  • Analysis of neuroscientific data from animal and human studies.
  • Computational modeling of decision-making processes.

Main Results:

  • Pavlovian processes significantly influence choice, explaining effects often attributed to emotion.
  • Recent experiments reveal the structure of Pavlovian control.
  • Neuroscientific data implicate the amygdala and its interactions in mediating these effects.

Conclusions:

  • Pavlovian influences on choice are computationally sensible and optimize decision-making.
  • Emotion, mediated by the amygdala, often covertly optimizes economic choice rather than corrupting it.