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Academics and health professionals used to view emotional responses and cognitive conditioning as separate, but now believe there is a connection. Cognition involves learning and reasoning, while emotion is linked to brain structures. Emotions appear to influence cognitive processes and vice versa. Bidirectional anatomical connections link emotion to successful cognitive tasks. Cognitive emotion regulation describes how a person might reevaluate stimuli following an emotional reaction.
Until the mid-20th century, academics and health professionals largely viewed emotional responses and cognitive conditioning as two separate entities. As the study of cognition and emotion has progressed, however, many authority figures have changed their views on the presence of sheer disparity between the two states. While still not unanimous, academic viewpoints have begun to harbor the idea that there is a possible connection between cognition and emotion.
“Cognition” usually refers to the psychological processing of learning and reasoning. It involves natural participation in abstract activities related to memory, planning, problem solving, and perception. Cognitive functions can occur without much awareness of them or in direct response to external inputs. For example, a simple cognitive response to extreme danger is to reason about an escape route, which could happen almost automatically or after you spend at least a few minutes problem solving. Another simple example involves the cognitive choice to shut out external distractions until a certain task is completed.
On the other hand, emotion historically defies an easily shared definition. Among various explanations for emotional states, mental health authorities typically subscribe to the theory that emotion occurs due to reward or punishment conditioning. Doctors who come from a more clinical or medical background may prefer the theory that the human body informs emotional responses. The latter group widely believes that emotions are linked to brain structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus. Whichever theory they ultimately choose to believe, most professionals who study brain activity agree that emotions appear to influence cognitive processes, and cognition appears to influence emotional responses.
Cognition and emotion are linked in many ways. Bidirectional anatomical connections involving the prefrontal and anterior brain structures link a surge of emotion to the successful completion of associated autonomic cognitive tasks. Furthermore, a stimulus that elicits an emotional response from an individual appears to elicit cognitive responses at the same time. For example, emotional visual content could activate the cerebral cortex, resulting in heightened cognitive processes related to how the visual system perceives and processes information.
Another connection between cognition and emotion involves how the body learns to respond in certain situations. Called cognitive emotion regulation by many, this theory describes how a person might reevaluate a series of stimuli following an intense emotional reaction. This type of cognitive reappraisal could occur due to brain structure interactions involving the amygdala, which is commonly stimulated when a person responds to emotional input, and the insular cortex.
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