PSY 6360 - Biological Bases of Affective and Cognitive Processes

For millennia, it has been a virtual truism that emotions and cognitions represent processes that are mutually distinct. However, recent advances in cognitive and affective neurosciences suggest that emotions and cognitions may be more closely intertwined than previously thought. This course will offer a conceptual analysis of major affective and cognitive constructs and domains, and their associations with discrete biological (neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic) substrates. The course will begin with a brief overview of the history of the study of emotions and cognitions, from antiquity through the 21st century. Next, the course will review basic functional and structural neuroanatomy, as well as basic principles of neurophysiology and information processing, as they relate to cognitive and affective processes. Lastly, the bulk of the course will be spent on an in-depth analysis of the current understanding of brain-emotion-cognition relationships, starting with a review of individual components of emotional and cognitive processing and their neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic underpinnings, and ending with mechanisms behind motivated actions.