Approach motivation in human cerebral cortex.

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci

Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA

Published: August 2018

AI Article Synopsis

  • Different areas of the brain are linked to different emotions, but how this happens is still unclear.
  • A study examined how using hands for positive (approach) and negative (avoidance) actions influences brain function related to emotions.
  • Results showed that a person's handedness (left or right) affected how brain stimulation impacted their feelings of motivation, suggesting that emotional processing in the brain is interconnected with motor functions.

Article Abstract

Different regions of the human cerebral cortex are specialized for different emotions, but the principles underlying this specialization have remained unknown. According to the , hemispheric specialization for affective motivation, a basic dimension of human emotion, varies across individuals according to the way they use their hands to perform approach- and avoidance-related actions. In a test of this hypothesis, here we measured approach motivation before and after five sessions of transcranial direct current stimulation to increase excitation in the left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, in healthy adults whose handedness ranged from strongly left-handed to strongly right-handed. The strength and direction of participants' handedness predicted whether electrical stimulation to frontal cortex caused an increase or decrease in their experience of approach-related emotions. The organization of approach motivation in the human cerebral cortex varies across individuals as predicted by the organization of the individuals' motor systems. These results show that the large-scale cortical organization of abstract concepts corresponds with the way people use their hands to interact with the world. Affective motivation may re-use neural circuits that evolved for performing approach- and avoidance-related motor actions.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6015831PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0141DOI Listing

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