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Successful parenting requires constant inferring of affective states. Especially vital is the correct identification of facial affect. Previous studies have shown that infant faces are processed preferentially compared to adult faces both on the behavioural and the neural level. This study aims to specifically investigate the child-evoked neural responses to affective faces and their modulation by motherhood and attention to affect. To do so, we used a paradigm to measure neural responses during both explicit and implicit facial affect recognition in mothers and non-mothers using child and adult faces. Increased activation to child as compared to adult faces was found for mothers and non-mothers in face processing areas (bilateral fusiform gyri) and areas associated with social understanding (bilateral insulae and medial superior frontal gyrus) when pooling implicit and explicit affect recognition. This child-evoked activation was modulated by motherhood with an increase in mothers as compared to non-mothers in the left precuneus. Additionally, explicitly recognising the affect led to increased child-evoked activation in the medial superior frontal gyrus as in both mothers and non-mothers. These results suggest preferential treatment of affective child over adult faces, which is modulated by motherhood and attention to affect.

Damasio proposes in his somatic marker theory that not only cognitive but also affective components are critical for decision making. Since affective judgment requires an interplay between affective and cognitive components, it might be considered a key process in decision making that has been linked to neural activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the relationship between VMPFC, emotionally (unexpected)‐ and cognitively (expected)‐accentuated affective judgment, and beneficial decision making (Iowa Gambling Task; IGT) in healthy subjects. Neuronal activity in the VMPFC during unexpected affective judgment significantly correlated with both global and final performance in the IGT task. These findings suggest that the degree to which subjects recruit the VMPFC during affective judgment is related to beneficial performance in decision making in gambling. Hum Brain Mapp 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Everyday and clinical experience demonstrate strong interactions between emotions and cognitions. Nevertheless the neural correlates underlying emotional–cognitive interaction remain unclear. Using event‐related fMRI, we investigated BOLD‐signal increases and decreases in medial and lateral prefrontal cortical regions during emotional and non‐emotional judgment of photographs taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Emotional and non‐emotional judgment conditions were compared to each other as well as with baseline allowing for distinction between relative signal changes (comparison between conditions) and true signal changes (referring to baseline). We have found that: (1) both emotional and non‐emotional judgment of IAPS pictures were characterized by signal increases in ventrally and dorsally located lateral prefrontal cortical areas and concurrent signal decreases in ventro‐ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; (2) direct comparison between emotional and non‐emotional judgment showed relative signal increases in ventro‐ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and in contrast, relative signal increases were detected in ventrally and dorsally located lateral prefrontal cortical areas when comparing non‐emotional to emotional judgment; and (3) as shown in separate comparisons with baseline, these relative signal changes were due to smaller signal decreases in ventro‐ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and smaller signal increases in ventrally and dorsally located lateral prefrontal cortical areas during emotional judgment. Therefore, the emotional load of a cognitive task lead to both less deactivation of medial prefrontal regions and, at the same time, less activation of lateral prefrontal regions. Analogous patterns of reciprocal modulation and attenuation have previously been described for other cortical regions such as visual and auditory areas. Reciprocal modulation and attenuation in medial and lateral prefrontal cortex might constitute the neurophysiologic basis for emotional–cognitive interaction as observed in both healthy and psychiatric subjects. Hum. Brain Mapping 21:202–212, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Our sense of self is strongly colored by emotions although at the same time we are well able to distinguish affect and self. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we here tested for the differen- tial effects of self-relatedness and emotion dimensions (valence, intensity) on parametric modulation of neural activity during perception of emotional stimuli. We observed opposite parametric modulation of self-relatedness and emotion dimensions in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum/ nucleus accumbens, whereas neural activity in subcortical regions (tectum, right amygdala, hypothala- mus) was modulated by self-relatedness and emotion dimensions in the same direction. In sum, our results demonstrate that self-relatedness is closely linked to emotion dimensions of valence and intensity in many lower subcortical brain regions involved in basic emotional systems and, at the same time, dis- tinct from them in higher cortical regions that mediate cognitive processes necessary for becoming aware of one's self, for example self-consciousness. Hum Brain Mapp 30:369-382, 2009. V C 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

We used emotional expectancy to study attentional modulation in the processing of emotional stimuli. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), volunteers saw emotional and neutral expect- ancy cues signaling the subsequent presentation of corresponding emotional or neutral pictorial stimuli. As a control, emotional and neutral pictures were presented without preceding expectancy cue, resulting in a 2 2 factorial design with the factors "expectancy" and "emotion." Statistical analysis revealed a significant positive interaction effect between these factors in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC, Brodmann area (BA) 9/10), amygdala, and dorsal midbrain. In all these regions, expectancy augmented the neural response to emotional but not to neutral pictures. Time course analysis of raw data suggests that this augmented activation was not preceded by baseline increases in MPFC and amygdala during the period of emotional expectancy. In a post-scanning session, the paradigm was presented for a second time to allow emotional intensity rating. Again, a significant interaction between expectancy and emotion was observed, with intensity ratings specif- ically enhanced in emotional photographs preceded by expectancy. There was a positive correlation between intensity ratings and blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals in the left amygdala. We conclude that specific components of the emotion network show enhanced activation in response to emotional stimuli when these are preceded by expectancy. This enhancement effect is not present in neutral pictures and might parallel accentuated subjective feeling states. Hum Brain Mapp 27:662- 677, 2006. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.