The impact of air pollution on neurocognitive development: Adverse effects and health disparities.

Air pollution is recognized as a major public health concern. The number of deaths related to ambient air pollution has increased in recent years and is projected to continue rising. Additionally, both short- and long-term air pollution exposure has been linked with deleterious effects on neurocognitive function and development. While air pollution poses as a threat to everyone, people of color and individuals of lower socioeconomic status are often exposed to elevated levels of air pollution as a function of systemic racism and classism. Further, given additional disparities in access to healthcare and other compounding stressors, adverse effects of air pollution on neurocognitive health are exacerbated among individuals who hold marginalized identities-making effects both less likely to be detected and treated. This review examines evidence of the effects of air pollution on neurocognitive development across the lifespan and incorporates an environmental justice perspective to highlight disparities in air pollution exposure across race and socioeconomic status. Last, upon the reviewed evidence, limitations of past research and recommendations for policy are discussed.

Positive biases and psychological functioning during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Many individuals have experienced a multitude of chronic stressors and diminished psychological functioning during COVID-19. The current study examined whether biases towards positive social media or positive autobiographical memories was related to increases in psychological functioning during COVID-19. Participants were 1071 adults (Mage = 46.31; 58% female; 78% White) recruited from MTurk. Participants reported on their social media consumption and autobiographical recall, positive and negative affect, and dysphoria symptoms. Results indicated that, at the first assessment collected in the spring and summer of 2020, positively biased social media consumption was cross-sectionally related to higher levels of positive affect, and positively biased autobiographical recall was cross-sectionally related to lower levels of negative affect and dysphoria symptoms. Sensitivity analyses examined cross-sectional relations from a second assessment collected in fall 2020, and prospective cross-lagged analyses. The findings point to potential psychological benefits of positive biases during chronic stressors.

Contributions of transient and sustained reward to memory formation.

Reward benefits to memory formation have been robustly linked to dopaminergic activity. Despite the established characterization of dopaminergic mechanisms as operating at multiple timescales, potentially supporting distinct functional outcomes, the temporal dynamics by which reward might modulate memory encoding are just beginning to be investigated. In the present study, we leveraged a mixed block/event experimental design to disentangle transient and sustained reward influences on task engagement and subsequent recognition memory in an adapted monetary-incentive-encoding (MIE) paradigm. Across three behavioral experiments, transient and sustained reward modulation of item and context memory was probed, at both 24-h and ~ 15-min retention intervals, to investigate the importance of overnight consolidation. In general, we observed that transient reward was associated with enhanced item memory encoding, while sustained reward modulated response speed but did not appear to benefit subsequent recognition accuracy. Notably, reward effects on item memory performance and response speed were somewhat inconsistent across the three experiments, with suggestions that RT speeding might also be related to time on task, and we did not observe reward modulation of context memory performance or amplification of reward benefits to memory by overnight consolidation. Taken together, the observed pattern of behavior is consistent with potentially distinct roles for transient and sustained reward in memory encoding and cognitive performance and suggests that further investigation of the temporal dynamics of dopaminergic contributions to memory formation will advance the understanding of motivated memory.

Remembering Election Night 2016: Subjective but not objective metrics of autobiographical memory vary with political affiliation, affective valence, and surprise.

Flashbulb memories represent a unique phenomenon linking research on cognition with research on emotion, yet most studies on this phenomenon have characterized collective events that are negative and unexpected in nature. In contrast, the 2016 American election of Donald Trump was a public, culturally shared event, eliciting extreme emotional responses that were positive for some individuals but negative for others, as well as varying levels of surprise. We longitudinally evaluated autobiographical memories for Election Night 2016 in a large online sample of Clinton supporters, Trump supporters, and third-party/nonvoters over a 12-month period, in terms of both objective memory metrics (information quantity and memory consistency) and subjective memory metrics (including memory confidence, metacognition, and sensory experience). Emotional responses to the election outcome varied widely, with Clinton supporters reporting highly negative responses, Trump supporters reporting highly positive responses, and third-party/nonvoters reporting mildly negative responses. Emotional intensity was enhanced in surprised versus nonsurprised individuals. Relative to third-party/nonvoters, Clinton and Trump supporters reported greater memory vividness, event importance, and sensory experience. Additionally, limited valence effects on subjective memory were observed (including higher memory confidence in Trump supporters and higher memory rehearsal in Clinton supporters). These differences in subjective experience were observed despite similar levels of information quantity and consistency as a function of valence. This characterization of memories for surprising positive events suggests they share many of the paradoxical qualities of memories for negative events often discussed as "flashbulb memories" but also points to potential differences in memory phenomenology for personal versus collectively experienced events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Revisiting positive affect and reward influences on cognitive control.

Modulation of cognitive control by emotion and motivation has become a major topic in cognition research; however, characterizing the extent to which these influences may dissociate has proved challenging. Here, I examine recent advances in this literature, focusing on: (1) neuromodulator mechanisms underlying positive affect and reward motivation effects on cognitive control; (2) contingency and associative learning in interactions between affect/reward and cognitive control; (3) aspects of task design, unrelated to affect/reward, that may have acted as confounding influences on cognitive control in prior work. I suggest that positive affect and reward should not be considered singular in their effects on cognitive control, but instead varying on multiple parameters and interacting with task demands, to determine goal-directed, adaptive behavior.

Proactive versus reactive emotion regulation: A dual-mechanisms perspective.

Emotion regulation (ER) relies on cognitive processing, but the foundational control mechanisms involved remain unclear. The process model of ER posits that different strategies occur at different points in time, with antecedent strategies occurring relatively early and response-focused strategies later in the affective time course. In parallel with this model, the dual mechanisms of control (DMC) theoretical framework proposes that cognitive control operates via 2 temporally distinct modes: anticipatory preparation to exert control (proactive control) and momentary cognitive engagement as the need arises (reactive control). However, empirical investigations of the role of proactive and reactive control in ER have been limited. In this article, we examine how ER processes can be characterized within the DMC framework, integrating these 2 theoretical perspectives. We first posit that any ER strategy may take place either prior or subsequent to onset of an emotional stimulus, depending on whether it is proactively or reactively enacted. Then, using reappraisal as an example, we discuss ER strategy use via both control modes. We further assert that proactive ER can be implemented in a global- or stimulus-dependent fashion and discuss how this implementation may affect the time course and cognitive load of ER strategies. We conclude by discussing how controlling for timing in future research may clarify how populations with reduced cognitive control may demonstrate intact ER (i.e., through greater reliance on reactive and/or global strategies) and how incorporation of the DMC perspective may inform ER interventions for clinical populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Expected Reward Value and Reward Uncertainty Have Temporally Dissociable Effects on Memory Formation.

Anticipating rewards has been shown to enhance memory formation. Although substantial evidence implicates dopamine in this behavioral effect, the precise mechanisms remain ambiguous. Because dopamine nuclei have been associated with two distinct physiological signatures of reward prediction, we hypothesized two dissociable effects on memory formation. These two signatures are a phasic dopamine response immediately following a reward cue that encodes its expected value and a sustained, ramping response that has been demonstrated during high reward uncertainty [Fiorillo, C. D., Tobler, P. N., & Schultz, W. Discrete coding of reward probability and uncertainty by dopamine neurons. Science, 299, 1898-1902, 2003]. Here, we show in humans that the impact of reward anticipation on memory for an event depends on its timing relative to these physiological signatures. By manipulating reward probability (100%, 50%, or 0%) and the timing of the event to be encoded (just after the reward cue versus just before expected reward outcome), we demonstrated the predicted double dissociation: Early during reward anticipation, memory formation was improved by increased expected reward value, whereas late during reward anticipation, memory formation was enhanced by reward uncertainty. Notably, although the memory benefits of high expected reward in the early interval were consolidation dependent, the memory benefits of high uncertainty in the later interval were not. These findings support the view that expected reward benefits memory consolidation via phasic dopamine release. The novel finding of a distinct memory enhancement, temporally consistent with sustained anticipatory dopamine release, points toward new mechanisms of memory modulation by reward now ripe for further investigation.

Motivational valence alters memory formation without altering exploration of a real-life spatial environment.

Volitional exploration and learning are key to adaptive behavior, yet their characterization remains a complex problem for cognitive science. Exploration has been posited as a mechanism by which motivation promotes memory, but this relationship is not well-understood, in part because novel stimuli that motivate exploration also reliably elicit changes in neuromodulatory brain systems that directly alter memory formation, via effects on neural plasticity. To deconfound interrelationships between motivation, exploration, and memory formation we manipulated motivational state prior to entering a spatial context, measured exploratory responses to the context and novel stimuli within it, and then examined motivation and exploration as predictors of memory outcomes. To elicit spontaneous exploration, we used the physical space of an art exhibit with affectively rich content; we expected motivated exploration and memory to reflect multiple factors, including not only motivational valence, but also individual differences. Motivation was manipulated via an introductory statement framing exhibit themes in terms of Promotion- or Prevention-oriented goals. Participants explored the exhibit while being tracked by video. They returned 24 hours later for recall and spatial memory tests, followed by measures of motivation, personality, and relevant attitude variables. Promotion and Prevention condition participants did not differ in terms of group-level exploration time or memory metrics, suggesting similar motivation to explore under both framing contexts. However, exploratory behavior and memory outcomes were significantly more closely related under Promotion than Prevention, indicating that Prevention framing disrupted expected depth-of-encoding effects. Additionally, while trait measures predicted exploration similarly across framing conditions, traits interacted with motivational framing context and facial affect to predict memory outcomes. This novel characterization of motivated learning implies that dissociable behavioral and biological mechanisms, here varying as a function of valence, contribute to memory outcomes in complex, real-life environments.

Relating Sensory, Cognitive, and Neural Factors to Older Persons' Perceptions about Happiness: An Exploratory Study.

Despite increased rates of disease, disability, and social losses with aging, seniors consistently report higher levels of subjective well-being (SWB), a construct closely related to happiness, than younger adults. In this exploratory study, we utilized an available dataset to investigate how aspects of health commonly deteriorating with age, including sensory (i.e., vision and hearing) and cognitive status, relate to variability in self-described contributors to happiness. Community-dwelling seniors (n = 114) responded to a single-item prompt: "name things that make people happy." 1731 responses were categorized into 13 domains of SWB via structured content analysis. Sensory health and cognition were assessed by Snellen visual acuity, pure-tone audiometry, and in-person administration of the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT) battery. A subset of eligible participants (n = 57) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess resting state functional connectivity (FC) within a previously described dopaminergic network associated with reward processing. SWB response patterns were relatively stable across gender, sensory status, and cognitive performance with few exceptions. For example, hearing-impaired participants listed fewer determinants of SWB (13.59 vs. 17.16; p < 0.001) and were less likely to name things in the "special events" category. Participants with a higher proportion of responses in the "accomplishments" domain (e.g., winning, getting good grades) demonstrated increased FC between the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, regions implicated in reward and motivated behavior. While the framework for determinants of happiness among seniors was largely stable across the factors assessed here, our findings suggest that subtle changes in this construct may be linked to sensory loss. The possibility that perceptions about determinants of happiness might relate to differences in intrinsic connectivity within reward-related brain networks also warrants further investigation.

Reward Anticipation Dynamics during Cognitive Control and Episodic Encoding: Implications for Dopamine.

Dopamine (DA) modulatory activity critically supports motivated behavior. This modulation operates at multiple timescales, but the functional roles of these distinct dynamics on cognition are still being characterized. Reward processing has been robustly linked to DA activity; thus, examining behavioral effects of reward anticipation at different timing intervals, corresponding to different putative dopaminergic dynamics, may help in characterizing the functional role of these dynamics. Towards this end, we present two research studies investigating reward motivation effects on cognitive control and episodic memory, converging in their manipulation of rapid vs. multi-second reward anticipation (consistent with timing profiles of phasic vs. ramping DA, respectively) on performance. Under prolonged reward anticipation, both control and memory performances were enhanced, specifically when combined with other experimental factors: task-informative cues (control task) and reward uncertainty (memory task). Given observations of ramping DA under uncertainty (Fiorillo et al., 2003) and arguments that uncertainty may act as a control signal increasing environmental monitoring (Mushtaq et al., 2011), we suggest that task information and reward uncertainty can both serve as "need for control" signals that facilitate learning via enhanced monitoring, and that this activity may be supported by a ramping profile of dopaminergic activity. Observations of rapid (i.e., phasic) reward on control and memory performance can be interpreted in line with prior evidence, but review indicates that contributions of different dopaminergic timescales in these processes are not well-understood. Future experimental work to clarify these dynamics and characterize a cross-domain role for reward motivation and DA in goal-directed behavior is suggested.

Reward favors the prepared: Incentive and task-informative cues interact to enhance attentional control.

The dual mechanisms of control account suggests that cognitive control may be implemented through relatively proactive mechanisms in anticipation of stimulus onset, or through reactive mechanisms, triggered in response to changing stimulus demands. Reward incentives and task-informative cues (signaling the presence/absence of upcoming cognitive demand) have both been found to influence cognitive control in a proactive or preparatory fashion; yet, it is currently unclear whether and how such cue effects interact. We investigated this in 2 experiments using an adapted flanker paradigm, where task-informative and reward incentive cues were orthogonally manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis. In Experiment 1, results indicated that incentives not only speed reaction times, but specifically reduce both interference and facilitation effects when combined with task-informative cues, suggesting enhanced proactive attentional control. Experiment 2 manipulated the timing of incentive cue information, demonstrating that such proactive control effects were only replicated with sufficient time to process the incentive cue (early incentive); when incentive signals were presented close to target onset (late incentive) the primary effect was a speed-accuracy trade-off. Together, results suggest that advance cueing may trigger differing control strategies, and that these strategies may critically depend on both the timing-and the motivational incentive-to use such cues.

Mechanisms of motivation-cognition interaction: challenges and opportunities.

Recent years have seen a rejuvenation of interest in studies of motivation-cognition interactions arising from many different areas of psychology and neuroscience. The present issue of Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience provides a sampling of some of the latest research from a number of these different areas. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the current state of the field, in terms of key research developments and candidate neural mechanisms receiving focused investigation as potential sources of motivation-cognition interaction. However, our primary goal is conceptual: to highlight the distinct perspectives taken by different research areas, in terms of how motivation is defined, the relevant dimensions and dissociations that are emphasized, and the theoretical questions being targeted. Together, these distinctions present both challenges and opportunities for efforts aiming toward a more unified and cross-disciplinary approach. We identify a set of pressing research questions calling for this sort of cross-disciplinary approach, with the explicit goal of encouraging integrative and collaborative investigations directed toward them.

Dissociable influences of reward motivation and positive emotion on cognitive control.

It is becoming increasingly appreciated that affective and/or motivational influences contribute strongly to goal-oriented cognition and behavior. An unresolved question is whether emotional manipulations (i.e., direct induction of affectively valenced subjective experience) and motivational manipulations (e.g., delivery of performance-contingent rewards and punishments) have similar or distinct effects on cognitive control. Prior work has suggested that reward motivation can reliably enhance a proactive mode of cognitive control, whereas other evidence is suggestive that positive emotion improves cognitive flexibility, but reduces proactive control. However, a limitation of the prior research is that reward motivation and positive emotion have largely been studied independently. Here, we directly compared the effects of positive emotion and reward motivation on cognitive control with a tightly matched, within-subjects design, using the AX-continuous performance task paradigm, which allows for relative measurement of proactive versus reactive cognitive control. High-resolution pupillometry was employed as a secondary measure of cognitive dynamics during task performance. Robust increases in behavioral and pupillometric indices of proactive control were observed with reward motivation. The effects of positive emotion were much weaker, but if anything, also reflected enhancement of proactive control, a pattern that diverges from some prior findings. These results indicate that reward motivation has robust influences on cognitive control, while also highlighting the complexity and heterogeneity of positive-emotion effects. The findings are discussed in terms of potential neurobiological mechanisms.

A new perspective on human reward research: how consciously and unconsciously perceived reward information influences performance.

The question of how human performance can be improved through rewards is a recurrent topic of interest in psychology and neuroscience. Traditional, cognitive approaches to this topic have focused solely on consciously communicated rewards. Recently, a largely neuroscience-inspired perspective has emerged to examine the potential role of conscious awareness of reward information in effective reward pursuit. The present article reviews research employing a newly developed monetary-reward-priming paradigm that allows for a systematic investigation of this perspective. We analyze this research to identify similarities and differences in how consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards impact three distinct aspects relevant to performance: decision making, task preparation, and task execution. We further discuss whether conscious awareness, in modulating the effects of reward information, plays a role similar to its role in modulating the effects of other affective information. Implications of these insights for understanding the role of consciousness in modulating goal-directed behavior more generally are discussed.

Temporal dynamics of motivation-cognitive control interactions revealed by high-resolution pupillometry.

Motivational manipulations, such as the presence of performance-contingent reward incentives, can have substantial influences on cognitive control. Previous evidence suggests that reward incentives may enhance cognitive performance specifically through increased preparatory, or proactive, control processes. The present study examined reward influences on cognitive control dynamics in the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), using high-resolution pupillometry. In the AX-CPT, contextual cues must be actively maintained over a delay in order to appropriately respond to ambiguous target probes. A key feature of the task is that it permits dissociable characterization of preparatory, proactive control processes (i.e., utilization of context) and reactive control processes (i.e., target-evoked interference resolution). Task performance profiles suggested that reward incentives enhanced proactive control (context utilization). Critically, pupil dilation was also increased on reward incentive trials during context maintenance periods, suggesting trial-specific shifts in proactive control, particularly when context cues indicated the need to overcome the dominant target response bias. Reward incentives had both transient (i.e., trial-by-trial) and sustained (i.e., block-based) effects on pupil dilation, which may reflect distinct underlying processes. The transient pupillary effects were present even when comparing against trials matched in task performance, suggesting a unique motivational influence of reward incentives. These results suggest that pupillometry may be a useful technique for investigating reward motivational signals and their dynamic influence on cognitive control.

Positive affect versus reward: emotional and motivational influences on cognitive control.

It is becoming increasingly appreciated that affective influences can contribute strongly to goal-oriented cognition and behavior. However, much work is still needed to properly characterize these influences and the mechanisms by which they contribute to cognitive processing. An important question concerns the nature of emotional manipulations (i.e., direct induction of affectively valenced subjective experience) versus motivational manipulations (e.g., delivery of performance-contingent rewards and punishments) and their impact on cognitive control. Empirical evidence suggests that both kinds of manipulations can influence cognitive control in a systematic fashion, but investigations of both have largely been conducted independently of one another. Likewise, some theoretical accounts suggest that emotion and motivation may modulate cognitive control via common neural mechanisms, while others suggest the possibility of dissociable influences. Here, we provide an analysis and synthesis of these various accounts, suggesting potentially fruitful new research directions to test competing hypotheses.

Neural circuitry of emotional and cognitive conflict revealed through facial expressions.

BACKGROUND: Neural systems underlying conflict processing have been well studied in the cognitive realm, but the extent to which these overlap with those underlying emotional conflict processing remains unclear. A novel adaptation of the AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), a stimulus-response incompatibility paradigm, was examined that permits close comparison of emotional and cognitive conflict conditions, through the use of affectively-valenced facial expressions as the response modality. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Brain activity was monitored with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance of the emotional AX-CPT. Emotional conflict was manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis, by requiring contextually pre-cued facial expressions to emotional probe stimuli (IAPS images) that were either affectively compatible (low-conflict) or incompatible (high-conflict). The emotion condition was contrasted against a matched cognitive condition that was identical in all respects, except that probe stimuli were emotionally neutral. Components of the brain cognitive control network, including dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), showed conflict-related activation increases in both conditions, but with higher activity during emotion conditions. In contrast, emotion conflict effects were not found in regions associated with affective processing, such as rostral ACC. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These activation patterns provide evidence for a domain-general neural system that is active for both emotional and cognitive conflict processing. In line with previous behavioural evidence, greatest activity in these brain regions occurred when both emotional and cognitive influences additively combined to produce increased interference.

Neural correlates of recognition memory for emotional faces and scenes.

We examined the influence of emotional valence and type of item to be remembered on brain activity during recognition, using faces and scenes. We used multivariate analyses of event-related fMRI data to identify whole-brain patterns, or networks of activity. Participants demonstrated better recognition for scenes vs faces and for negative vs neutral and positive items. Activity was increased in extrastriate cortex and inferior frontal gyri for emotional scenes, relative to neutral scenes and all face types. Increased activity in these regions also was seen for negative faces relative to positive faces. Correct recognition of negative faces and scenes (hits vs correct rejections) was associated with increased activity in amygdala, hippocampus, extrastriate, frontal and parietal cortices. Activity specific to correctly recognized emotional faces, but not scenes, was found in sensorimotor areas and rostral prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that emotional valence and type of visual stimulus both modulate brain activity at recognition, and influence multiple networks mediating visual, memory and emotion processing. The contextual information in emotional scenes may facilitate memory via additional visual processing, whereas memory for emotional faces may rely more on cognitive control mediated by rostrolateral prefrontal regions.