Cognition and Emotion: Perspectives of a Closing Gap

TL;DR

This paper explores how emotions serve as an intermediate layer in cognitive systems, reducing complexity and guiding decision-making, with a focus on neuromodulation and synthetic emotion models.

Contribution

It reviews current understanding of emotional functions in cognition, emphasizing neuromodulators and proposing a new view of emotional diffusive control involving interaction effects.

Findings

Emotions act as a complexity-reducing layer in cognitive systems.

Emotional diffusive control involves interaction effects between arousal and reward.

Discussion of synthetic emotion models and open issues in emotional control.

Abstract

The primary tasks of a cognitive system is to survive and to maximize a life-long utility function, like the number of offsprings. A direct computational maximization of life-long utility is however not possible in complex environments, especially in the context, of real-world time constraints. The central role of emotions is to serve as an intermediate layer in the space of policies available to agents and animals, leading to a large dimensional reduction of complexity. We review our current understanding of the functional role of emotions, stressing the role of the neuromodulators mediating emotions for the diffusive homeostatic control system of the brain. We discuss a recent proposal, that emotional diffusive control is characterized, in contrast to neutral diffusive control, by interaction effects, viz by interferences between emotional arousal and reward signaling. Several proposals for the realization of synthetic emotions are discussed in this context, together with key open issues regarding the interplay between emotional motivational drives and diffusive control.