Cognition Emotion Interaction Study, Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre

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States of emotional arousal, particularly stress and anxiety, are known to interfere with the ability to concentrate, make informed decisions, and appropriately regulate behaviour. Similarly, situations requiring intense concentration or concerted Neuropsychological effort are often associated with affective blunting. While such behavioural phenomena are well documented, the neural underpinnings of this reciprocal relationship are not well understood. In this project, twenty healthy volunteers were recruited from the general population and were asked to perform the Multi-Source Interference Task (MSIT), a Neuropsychological paradigm requiring active selective attention, Neuropsychological conflict resolution, and response inhibition during concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants were then made to believe that they were being actively scrutinized and observed by a group of researchers in order to create a subjective sense of anxiety and were asked to perform the task again. Investigating the neural effects of the interaction between Neuropsychological performance and emotional valence, as well as examining the interplay between dorsal Neuropsychological functional networks and their ventral limbic counterparts may result in a greater understanding of this dynamic interplay.