The self-regulating brain: Cortical-subcortical feedback and the development of intelligent action
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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2021, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsCitation Excerpt :The more recent structures – including the NA, which is unique to mammals (Porges, 2009), and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is unique to humans – permit a more varied and, in most modern contexts that humans inhabit, appropriate range of cognitive and behavioral responses (LeDoux, 1996). At the sub-cortical level, this is accomplished, in part, by the inhibitory influence of the PNS on the SNS; at the cortical level, it is facilitated by the inhibitory projections from the PFC to limbic and sub-cortical structures (Amat et al., 2006; Lewis and Todd, 2007; Thayer, 2006), including projections to the SA node of the heart via the vagus nerve (Porges, 2007; Saul et al., 1991). When we measure HRV, we are indexing the regulatory activity of the PFC (see Thayer et al., 2012, for a meta-analysis) and the PNS.
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