Article:
Mood Linked To Cognitive Abilities
Source: Washington University In St. Louis
Date: 19 March 2002
Mood Linked To Cognitive Abilities
St. Louis,
Mo., March 18, 2002 -- In a study of how human emotional states influence
higher mental abilities, cognitive neuroscientists at Washington University
in St. Louis have shown that watching even just 10 minutes of classic
horror films or prime-time television comedies can have a significant
short-term influence on areas of the brain critical for reasoning, intelligence,
and other types of higher cognition.
"To
have the best mental performance and the most efficient pattern of brain
activity, you need a match between the type of mood you are in and the
type of task you are doing," said Jeremy Gray, Ph.D., a Research
Scientist in the Psychology Department in Arts & Sciences and lead
author of the study. "This is one of the first studies to really
show that performance and brain activity are a product of an equal partnership
or marriage between our emotional states and higher cognition."
Scheduled
for publication March 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the study is co-authored by Gray and Washington University colleagues
Todd Braver, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in Arts &
Sciences and director of the laboratory where the study was conducted,
and Marcus Raichle, M.D., professor of radiology, neurology, anatomy
and neurobiology in the School of Medicine.
"Our
results suggest that emotion is not a second-class citizen in the world
of the brain," Gray said. "The findings surprise people. Mild
anxiety actually improved performance on some kinds of difficult tasks,
but hurt performance on others. Being in a pleasant mood boosted some
kinds of performance but impaired other kinds. To understand how a particular
emotion or mood will influence performance, you have to take into account
the type of task. Our results show that the brain takes it into account."
Using a
sophisticated technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), Gray and colleagues recorded brain activity as people performed
difficult cognitive tasks just after watching short, emotional videos.
The lingering effects of the videos had remarkably specific influences
on the levels of brain activity. A region of the prefrontal cortex was
jointly influenced by a combination of mood state and cognitive task,
but not by either one alone. Located just under the temples and slightly
higher, near the corner of the forehead, this area had been previously
thought to be critical for higher mental functions. However, the current
work suggests that the region may actually be critical for integrating
cognitive tasks together with emotional signals.
"The
patterns of activity in this area suggested that it plays a regulatory
role, because it responded to the changes in subjective difficulty imposed
by the various emotion-cognition combinations," Braver said. "Our
evidence for this is that the activity in this region was correlated
with behavioral performance, such that stronger activity may have helped
to reduce the influence that emotion had on modulating behavior.
"We
believe that this is the first study to show that specific brain regions
mediate these interactions between emotional states and cognition,"
Braver added. "Moreover, the findings seem to refute our common
sense notions about these interactions--for example, that bad moods
are always detrimental for cognition; good moods are always beneficial."
In the study,
14 college-aged men and women were shown a series of short video clips,
which elicited one of three emotional states: pleasant, neutral or anxious.
Pleasant moods were induced by viewing television comedies, such as
"Candid Camera" (1985); and anxious moods followed the viewing
of cult horror classics, namely the movies "Halloween" (1978,
1989) and "Scream" (1996).
After a
particular series of clips, participants were asked to perform a difficult
cognitive task requiring the active retention of information in short-term
or "working" memory. Essentially, participants were shown
a series of either words or unfamiliar faces on a computer screen, and
had to indicate whether the current word (or face, in the face task)
was the same as the one they had just seen three times back in the series.
The experiment
studied the influence of relatively mild emotions on higher-level cognitive
functions. In real life, such conditions might result from arguing with
a spouse before leaving for work, or seeing a gory traffic accident
on the way there. How might the lingering effects of these disturbing
but not traumatic emotional experiences influence your job performance
later in the day? Would the influence of various emotions be different
if your job is highly verbal (defending a legal argument in court),
as compared to highly non-verbal (monitoring plane on an air traffic
control system)? The research suggests that the kind of job could make
a big difference.
The research
was supported by the National Science Foundation and the McDonnell Center
for Higher Brain Function at Washington University in St. Louis.
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MOOD
IMPROVE is not a drug and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or
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MOOD IMPROVE should not be considered equivalent to or a substitute
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