Elsevier

Cognitive Development

Volume 22, Issue 4, October 2007, Pages 406-430
Cognitive Development

The self-regulating brain: Cortical-subcortical feedback and the development of intelligent action

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.08.004Get rights and content

Abstract

To speak of cognitive regulation versus emotion regulation may be misleading. However, some forms of regulation are carried out by executive processes, subject to voluntary control, while others are carried out by “automatic” processes that are far more primitive. Both sets of processes are in constant interaction, and that interaction gives rise to a stream of activity that is both cognitive and emotional. Studying the brain helps us understand these reciprocal regulatory influences in some detail. Cortical activities regulate subcortical activities through executive modulation of prepotent appraisals and emotional responses. Subcortical systems regulate the cortex by tuning its activities to the demands or opportunities provided by the environment. Cortical controls buy us time, as needed for planning and intelligent action. Subcortical controls provide energy, focus, and direction, as needed for relevant emotion-guided behaviour. We review the neural processes at work in both directions of regulatory activity, looking at the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as a hub of cortical systems mediating downward control, and discussing limbic, hypothalamic, and brainstem systems that mediate upward control. A macrosystem that displays both directions of control includes the ACC and the amygdala within a feedback circuit whose features vary with clinical-personality differences. Developmental changes in ACC-mediated self-regulation support advances in directed attention, response inhibition, and self-monitoring. Developmental changes in amygdala-mediated self-regulation involve the compilation of meanings that direct thought and behaviour, thus consolidating individual differences over the lifespan. In this way, the capacity to exert voluntary control develops alongside the accumulation of associations that trigger the responses that demand control. The balance between these developmental progressions has implications for personality formation and mental health.

Section snippets

Vertical structure in the brain

Let's try to resolve the second problem first. If we can’t divide neural structures and activities into cognitive versus emotional, can we at least find a brain dimension that roughly corresponds to our intuitive or folk-psychological distinctions between emotional responses and cognitive interpretations? Luckily, we can: the vertical dimension. This is not so much a straight line from the neck to the top of the head, but an imaginary axis that moves up and out from the most primitive regions,

Self-regulation revisited

Theories of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela, 1987; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991) characterize the self-organization of the nervous system as an evolutionary process that gives rise to embodied cognition. They explain that simple, one-celled animals did not require a nervous system because sensory input and motor output were processed by the components of a single cell. These components did not have to communicate with each other because chemical changes at the sensory surface directly

Cortical versus subcortical mediators of self-regulation

Most interactions among brain parts (e.g., cells, regions, structures, systems) are reciprocal at a global level of analysis, such that activation flowing from one structure to another is reciprocated by activation flowing back from the second structure to the first. There are many examples. Perceptual information flowing from sensory to prefrontal cortices is reciprocated by information tuning the sensory cortices to the objects of attention. The cortex initiates an amygdala response based on

Developmental course of ACC-mediated self-regulation

The developmental study of neural systems implicated in self-regulation is really just getting underway, and very little research has been done on the developmental timetable of changes in cortical or subcortical systems of self-regulation. However, developmental neuroscientists have acquired a pastiche of behavioural and neurobiological findings. Through inference from adult studies, behavioural milestones, developmental logic, and some good guessing, they have begun to propose reasonable

Conclusion

This article has explored new avenues for understanding the concept of self-regulation inspired by a close look at the flows of activity and modes of interaction among neural components. We have argued that a neural perspective demands the abandonment of categorical delineations between cognition and emotion, as well as the acknowledgement of multiple sources and directions of self-regulation, whereby different brain systems tune each other in the service of global synchrony and coherence. Two

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