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Vincent Van Gogh often expressed his swirling emotions through art. Van Gogh was tortured with sadness and depression. In the beginning he painted like conventional artist would, his art was "normal" for his time. Over the years emotions invaded his every thought and slowly, through the cracks of his consciousness, emotions consumed his paintings.

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How Emotions Affect Learning, Behavior, and Relationships. 

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How Emotions Affect Learning, Behavior, and Relationships. 

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Lori Desautels, the writer of this article, touches on the aspects of emotion that can affect our brains. Fear can take over, and our brain’s chemistry will change. Our emotions can be overcome with fear, anger, anxiety, frustration, and sadness, ultimately leaving us unlogical. Desautel references the Pixar animation Inside Out, a movie about one girl's emotions pushing to keep the girls emotionally alive. Desautels believes this is a very accurate portrayal of actual human emotion. She then goes on to talk about her research on Neuroplasticity/Feelings and the concepts within. Desautels tells us how our brain can rewire itself based on life experiences. This leads us to “core memories” from inside out, these are memories that we cannot forget because they had a great emotional impact on us. The emotions can be positive or negative and leave a lasting imprint, changing the way we think, behave, and feel.

This article gives me the beginning of my answer to how emotions affect writing outcomes. We see that we are rewired by experiences, they impact the way we behave and what our thinking process is. We first must experience emotions, both positive and negative, to have a meaningful thought process. If someone experiences a lot of positive emotions relating to a topic, their writing will surely reflect that.

I found it to explain why communication is so important is any type of relationships. If emotions are bottled up and kept to one's self then one day they might explode. This often ruins friendships, romantic relationships, and family relationships. I feel that when emotions are bottled up it is like silently lying to yourself, and to others around you. This can have a physiological affect and cause us to think and act in many different ways.

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Pivoting off the film Inside Out, here are strategies to help explore how joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust can help students.

We need all of our emotions for thinking, problem solving, and focused attention. We are neurobiologically wired, and to learn anything, our minds must be focused and our emotions need to "feel" in balance. Emotional regulation is necessary so that we can remember, retrieve, transfer, and connect all new information to what we already know. When a continuous stream of negative emotions hijacks our frontal lobes, our brain's architecture changes, leaving us in a heightened stress-response state where fear, anger, anxiety, frustration, and sadness take over our thinking, logical brains.

The 2015 film is an exceptional and accurate portrayal of our five core emotions. These primary emotions are joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. This film depicts how we use these emotions when difficult and happy experiences arise, and how we need the negative emotions just as much as the positive.

After reviewing the science behind Inside Out, I developed research-based educational neuroscience strategies, questions, and assessment ideas aligning with a few scenes from the film. In this post, we'll explore four categories representing the conceptual and developing brains of all children and adolescents. There is no recipe for successful implementation of these strategies, and each will be based on the grade level, teacher preparation time, class time, and mostly the enthusiasm that we bring when introducing these concepts to our students.

Neuroplasticity/Feelings

Neuroplasticity is the brain's capacity to rewire, strengthening pathways between neurons that are exercised and used while weakening connections between cellular pathways that are not used or retrieved. Rewiring our brain circuits is experience dependent -- we can change the synapses or connections that are firing by changing a perception or behavior.

Neuroplasticity includes reframing or reappraising an experience, event, or relationship so that we observe and experience a different outcome. What we perceive and expect is what we get! The brain sees and responds to perception, not reality. Negative lingering brain states can become neural traits that are hardwired into our circuitry. Neuroplasticity is the best news from neuroscience in recent years.

The processes that support emotional intelligence are addressed in the growing field of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). The theory behind IPNB provides a picture of human mental development and the potential for transformation that exists in changing thinking and processing of emotions, thoughts and behaviors (Siegel, 2001, 2006, 2007). The concept of emotional intelligence is interrelated with IPNB and the development of mindful awareness as a strategy for achieving healthy integration of emotional, psychological, physiological, and cognitive functioning (Davis & Hayes, 2011; Siegel, 2001, 2007).

In the film Inside Out, we are introduced to core memories. All of us are constantly creating memories, but what makes them core or significant are the emotions that we attach to these past events, experiences, and relationships. Emotions drive our attention and perception. We form positive and negative core memories because of the emotional intensity that we've attached to the event or experience.

The movie introduces us to the emotions mingling in 11-year-old Riley's brain. Her joyful core memories are represented by golden balls. At the beginning of the film, Riley's sadness interferes with these golden balls of joy-filled memories. When a core golden memory is touched by sadness, the gold fades to deep blue, and joy becomes frustrated. Later, we learn through Riley's various experiences that the blue and gold tones representing sadness and joy can work well together, weaving beautiful contrast to create a lasting core memory. These core memories are stored in "long-term" and eventually become a part of our Personality Islands, or what I have labeled as the Islands of Self.

The questions below are designed to ignite your creativity and thought processes as you integrate topics and standards into morning meetings, afternoon circles, and subject matter -- as you embrace the power of feelings and how they intimately affect learning, relationships, and behaviors.

Questions for Educators

1. What types of core memories could you create in your classrooms and buildings with students and teachers? These memories could be emotional, academic, or social, reflecting a new relationship, a novel way of attempting an assignment, or a collaboration project with others.

2. How can we create core memories that energize, pique curiosity, and bring joy to our students?

3. Are you teaching the students about their neuroanatomy?

4. Do students understand the negative role that stress plays in cognitive functioning with regard to learning, memorizing, and retrieving information?

5. How might we begin a class period or day with an emotional check-in? What is the weather in your brain? Could we use laminated notecards with the primary emotions for younger students and the primary and secondary emotions for older students? Students could display the feeling that they are holding as they begin class and note how it changes throughout the day.

Questions for Students

These questions were designed for promoting student discussion, self-reflection, and self-awareness. Dr. Dan Seigel's research reports that, "What is sharable is bearable."

Sadness helped Joy in the film, and your own Sadness can help you.

1. How do you cope with Sadness?
2. Can you use your Sadness to feel better? How?
3. What would happen if we never felt Sadness? Is it sometimes good to keep Sadness inside a circle so that it does not spread and get out of control? Why?

Fear and Anger can protect and motivate us.

4. When was Fear needed in your life?
5. How did Fear help you?
6. What is the perfect amount of Fear?
7. What happens to our thinking and problem solving when we carry too much Fear or Sadness?
8. How does Anger show up in your brain?
9. Has Anger ever helped you?
10. How do you typically handle your Anger?

Disgust keeps us from being poisoned physically and socially.

11. How has the feeling of Disgust helped you?
12. How has expressing Disgust hurt your relationships or experiences?

In the film, Joy plays the leading role among the feelings in Riley's brain.

13. Does Joy always play the leading role in our brains?
14. What happened when Joy and Sadness left headquarters?
15. How do we see Joy in your brain?
16. What creates Joy to take over your brain?

Imagine having no feelings at all.

17. What would life be like if we didn't have feelings?
18. Describe two positive changes in our life if we didn't have feelings.
19. Describe two negative changes that could occur in a life with no feelings.

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How Emotions Affect Learning, Behaviors, and Relationships

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Pivoting off the film Inside Out, here are strategies to help explore how joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust can help students. We need all of our emotions for thinking, problem solving, and focused attention.

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A psychological study on expressive writing and its benefits. The article explains that expressive writing is usually used to give emotions, feelings, memories, objects, or people attention. It can be messy and explosive at times. It is often written as a story with “beginning, middle, and end.” Paragraph 3. Expressive writing is not supposed to be clean and pretty, the writer should not worry too much about grammar and punctuation. The writer should get whatever is on their mind onto the paper, it should flow and be constant. John F. Evans, the writer of this article states that expressive writing may as well have health benefits on individuals. Studies have shown positive outcomes with patients that use expressive writing. Evans gives us six instructions for expressive writing: First,  time, which means have a schedule and stick to it. Second, topic, write about something that is personal and has affected you in some way. Third. Write continuously, do not worry about properness, just keep writing. Fourth, write only for yourself, this means do not worry what others might think, because you are writing for yourself and you might even throw it away. Fifth, flip-out rule, do not keep writing about something that will trigger you and send you off the deep end. Sixth, expect heavy boots, you will probably feel down after writing but it is okay and it will go away.

This article is useful in the way that after learning about emotions and their effects on your mental state, it is nice knowing that it is okay to express your feelings through writing. This is so helpful, therapeutic, and you will find that you are not accidentally bringing your emotions into moments where they are often not needed. I find after expressive writing myself that I am much calmer and I can look at my feelings from another perspective. I often will see that it is normal to feel the way that I do or that it was silly and I feel better.

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Expressive writing is a cornerstone of wellness and writing connections. If you are not familiar with it, you may be asking: "Just what is expressive writing, and how is that related to my wellness?"

Expressive writing comes from our core. It is personal and emotional writing without regard to form or other writing conventions, like spelling, punctuation, and verb agreement. Turn off your resident Dr. Comma Splice. Expressive writing pays no attention to propriety: it simply expresses what is on your mind and in your heart.

Expressive writing pays more attention to feelings than the events, memories, objects, or people in the contents of a narrative. Like narrative writing, expressive writing may have the arc of a story: beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes expressive writing behaves like a story that swells to crest and resolves itself on firm ground. But often, expressive writing is turbulent and unpredictable, and that is OK. Expressive writing is not so much what happened as it is how you feel about what happened or is happening.

The connection between expressive writing and wellness has been notably explored by Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin. ¹ In his landmark research project, Pennebaker developed an expressive writing prompt to uncover the potential health benefits of writing about emotional upheaval. Pennebaker's research project has been replicated many times with positive outcomes. The prompt and subsequent studies are often referred to as the Pennebaker Paradigm.
Become Your Own Researcher
To help you get a better understanding of expressive writing and what it can do for you, I am asking you to become your own researcher. Try out this exercise and report on your findings by commenting on this blog post.

Please read these general instructions completely before you begin writing. ²

1. Time: Write a minimum of 20 minutes per day for four consecutive days.

2. Topic: What you choose to write about should be extremely personal and important to you.

3. Write continuously: Do not worry about punctuation, spelling, and grammar. If you run out of things to say, draw a line or repeat what you have already written. Keep pen on paper.

4. Write only for yourself: You may plan to destroy or hide what you are writing. Do not turn this exercise into a letter. This exercise is for your eyes only.

5. Observe the Flip-out Rule: If you get into the writing, and you feel that you cannot write about a certain event because it will push you over the edge, STOP writing!

6. Expect heavy boots: Many people briefly feel a bit saddened or down after expressive writing, especially on the first day or so. Usually this feeling goes away completely in an hour or two.
The Pennebaker Writing Prompt (Write for 20 minutes)
In your writing, I would like you to really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts about the most traumatic experience in your entire life. You might tie this trauma to other parts of your life: your childhood, your relationships with others, including parents, lovers, friends, relatives, or other people important to you. You might link your writing to your future and who you would like to become in your future, or to who you have been, or who you are now. Not everyone has had a single trauma, but all of us have had major conflicts or stressors, and you can write about these as well. All your writing is confidential. There will be no sharing of content. Do not worry about form or style, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, or grammar.
Your Results
Give yourself some time after writing to reflect on what you have written and to be compassionate with yourself. If you are worried about someone else seeing what you wrote, put your writing in a safe place, or simply tear it up or shred it. But if you are not concerned that someone may read what you wrote, you may want to keep your writing, so you can come back to it after you have completed the four-day exercise.

A week or two after you have completed the four days of expressive writing, you may want to reflect on what you notice in your life, how you feel, and how you behave. And perhaps you will share what you discovered with our readers.

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Expressive writing is a cornerstone of wellness and writing connections. If you are not familiar with it, you may be asking: "Just what is expressive writing, and how is that related to my wellness?" Expressive writing comes from our core. It is personal and emotional writing without regard to form or other writing conventions, like spelling, punctuation, and verb agreement.

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A video on the reasons emotions are strongly associated with memories.

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All Subconscious Blockages Are Suppressed emotions.

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All Subconscious Blockages Are Suppressed emotions.

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This article talks about how we have learned about emotions. Generally, most people know that bad or sad emotions are not good for them so of course, you want to make them go away. The article points out that this may lead to emotions being suppressed instead of expressing them correctly. It talks about the importance of expressing emotions so that we do not have these emotions that will surface later in our lives and often in a negative way.

I found this article useful because it talks about a common misconception that emotions should be hidden, and what most people do not realize is that emotions are so important to express in a healthy way. Many people who keep their emotions suppressed will unconsciously express them in other ways like though writing.

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For all our education and wisdom, most of us are mentally challenged when it comes to emotions. Anyone can see that not expressing them is a disaster of epic proportions waiting to happen.

Given that it's not rocket science to deduce that repressed emotion is the cause of 90% of all illness, what boggles the mind is why we resist expressing how we feel so strongly. In fact, it's one of the quirks of our clinical work. People can sit around all day discussing how they need to get old emotions out of their system, but one minute of actually doing some emoting (expression) usually creates a stampede for the toilets.

Why? Because we are so uncomfortable with strong emotions, especially the so-called negative ones. We have been taught absolutely nothing about the function of emotions. We just know that we need to make them go away. And we want them to go away, now.

We become so inexperienced with the "big three" (anger, sadness and fear) that they genuinely scare us. I've lost count of the number of men who have told me that they are afraid of what might happen if they were to really let go. Even greater numbers of clients tell me that they don't want to sink into a pool of sadness because they are sure that they will drown in it. Anyone who has genuinely been scared knows it isn't fun. A simple fear of heights, once triggered, is a paralysing, heart pounding, blood-pumping affair. And I haven't even touched on shame or guilt - a couple of uninvited gatecrashers who've locked themselves inside the booze fridge.

These negative emotions are not bad per se. We are just oblivious to any benefit that might come from them because we are so busy trying to get rid of them. We have learned only how to make them go away. The best thing we can do is to turn towards these feelings and explore them. This is most practically done when they arise but may have to be tackled at another (more private or convenient) time.

Emotional expression involves actively exploring your emotions and releasing their energy. This is the emotionally intelligent option. Fresh emotions are healthy if fully felt and properly expressed. Numerous studies have demonstrated both mental and physical health benefits associated with emotional expression, and as a widely-respected paper published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology posits: "on the basis of research over the past decade, psychologists now have a strong sense that talking or even writing about emotions or personal upheavals can boost autonomic nervous system activity, immune function, and physical health."

Example
Two ducks float peacefully along in their pond; suddenly one crosses too far into the other duck's territory. A fight starts - fast and furious. It lasts for only for a few seconds before, just as suddenly, they float off in their respective directions. As they do so they flap their wings furiously, and then return to their peaceful floating as if the fight never happened.
How do they return to a peaceful life immediately after the fight? Why don't they suffer afterwards, like most humans do? Why don't they have any 'wounds to lick'?
It's simple. When they flap their wings, they work off the energy and emotions they've built up in the fight - they purge it fully.

While expressing your emotions is not always easy or comfortable, it will allow you to experience total emotional mastery, where no external event can knock you into a negative emotional state. We will talk more about how to do this later.

Suppression is essentially avoidance. When an emotion is painful or uncomfortable, our natural reaction is to push it away. Painful emotions are pushed deep within ourselves to be 'dealt with later when it hurts less'. This is unrealistic (it will always be uncomfortable) and extremely unhealthy.

They get infected and begin to rot. The longer they are left, the nastier they get, and what began as a cut on your toe might cost you your whole leg.

As Keith Petrie observed when assessing the effect of written emotional expression on immune function in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection, there is "considerable data to suggest that when individuals actively inhibit emotional expression, they show measurable immunological changes consistent with poorer health outcomes."

Current research on emotions states that suppressing emotions can lead to physical and psychological health problems. The leading researcher in this field, James W Pennebaker, suggests that suppressing emotions requires a tremendous amount of effort. Pennebaker speculates that the very act of avoiding feeling creates physical stress. Holding our emotions in prevents our bodies from functioning properly because of the stress it creates.

Imagine that you have a bucket inside you for each feeling you suppress. Each time you avoid an emotion it is pushed down into this container. As you go through life, your bucket starts to fill up. To prevent the emotions welling up, you push them down further and put a lid on the bucket, creating pressure. Now the buckets are silently quivering away inside you - one more drop and they will burst open like floodgates.
Example John is a 49 year old man who is suicidal. His family is so concerned about him that he is on suicide watch to ensure he does not take his own life. John has spent his entire life suppressing his emotions - never dealing with feeling abandoned by both of his parents. He is essentially a hurt little boy - and he admits that he has never really grown up. John's father was very strict, worked extremely hard and never told his sons that he loved them. John's mother was an undemonstrative woman who coped with her own feelings of abandonment by withdrawing. From the outside, John's upbringing was not unpleasant. His parents provided well for him and worked hard to create a nice life for their family. They were never abusive. It is important to understand that what actually happened is irrelevant - what matters is how John feels. John's pain is the result of all three negative emotions overflowing from their buckets simultaneously. All John needs to do is explore and express his emotions and he will recover, but he continues to state that he can't. The truth is that he won't. He has spent his entire life choosing not to express his emotions.
We know that if John could find the courage to explore his emotions he would be a healthy, balanced person in just a few (albeit intense) days.
Strong emotions often come up when we least expect it. A shocking number of couples come to us for help when their marriage nearly dissolves over the toothpaste tube being squeezed in the middle. As you might guess, the real problem has nothing to do with toothpaste.

For men, the only negative emotion that is safe to express is anger. If you're a man, you don't get scared, and you certainly don't cry. If you do, you're simply labelled 'weak' or a 'sissy'. Conversely, women aren't allowed to be angry because it's not nice. Angry women are often referred to as 'bitches'. These conflicting teachings often mean that dealing with the opposite sex is like walking through a minefield - be very careful or you'll get blown up. When we express our emotions enough to keep the buckets empty, these misunderstandings fizzle quickly because we are able to be patient with each other.

Let's have a closer look at emotional intelligence.

Many people mistakenly believe that external events exert control over their emotions. Abandoning this belief and realising that we have the ability to decide how we feel at any given moment is the first step to emotional mastery. From this point of view, perspective is essential. Nothing is good or bad. Events are neutral. What causes us to feel a certain way is how we interpret the situation - how we think about it. The event itself has no meaning other than that which we assign it. The act of assigning meaning, whether conscious or not, is what causes us to feel a certain way. Different people will always interpret the same situation differently.

When diagnosed with terminal illness, some people interpret it as terrible and become depressed, while others interpret it as a challenge and find a way to overcome the illness. Still others view the sickness as a 'wake-up call' and re-evaluate their priorities to make the best possible use of the time left. To some it's an end, to others a new beginning.

More often than not, these interpretations are subconscious, but they don't have to be. We can choose to find and assign a different interpretation to any situation we come across. In this way, we can become empowered by our own choices. Instead of failure, we can create a learning experience. Instead of loss, we can feel gratitude for what we have. In place of rejection, we can see a mismatch and a renewed opportunity to find a perfect fit.
Between stimulus and response lies the opportunity to make a conscious choice.
We can go bankrupt and move on to even greater wealth - many people have done exactly that. We can be disfigured and still inspire others - W. Mitchell did. A loved one can leave us feeling depressed and suicidal and we can still bounce back - Billy Joel did. On the other hand, we can enjoy outstanding success and still abuse ourselves to the point of death - John Belushi did.

For any 'negative' event, you can find someone who turned it into an empowering experience, and for any 'positive' event, you can find someone who interpreted it badly enough to hurt themselves. Once we grasp this, we can begin to master our emotions.

When we avoid the trap of letting external situations control us we can use our consciousness to direct our interpretation toward the greatest possible outcome. When we are independent of external events, we can be truly free. No matter what happens to us, we can choose to be at peace.

Emotions are not thoughts; however being emotionally intelligent challenges us to use our thoughts to affect our emotions. We must understand that we have the innate ability to consciously direct our thoughts to create any feeling we want, whenever we want. This prevents external circumstances from hijacking our emotions and creates a sense of inner peace.
Practices for Emotional Stability
We cannot master our emotions and practice emotional intelligence without first becoming aware of what we are feeling. The simplest way to do this is to constantly 'check in' with yourself. Just pausing to reflect on how you feel throughout the day can prevent many of the minor mishaps that result in you being hijacked by your emotions. Another simple but effective strategy is to start listening to what you say to others - both the words you use and the tone of your voice.

This is what we call expressing cleanly. Yelling at the person you are angry with will not help - it will only make you angry with yourself for hurting them, and ultimately provide you with more proof that suppression is a better method.

Remember - this can be uncomfortable. Feeling your emotions takes courage, but it is nothing that you cannot handle. Ensure that you have the time to complete the exercises properly; stopping in the middle will leave you feeling a lot worse. Have faith that if you allow yourself to feel, you will come out the other side better off.

Remind yourself that your emotions are not wrong, they simply are. Feel them fully when they are fresh and you will truly experience freedom. Remember that we rarely feel one emotion at a time. Don't be startled if you are working with anger and suddenly find you feel very sad.

These exercises may seem too simple and easy to make a difference. The difficult part is finding the time to continue using them. If you want to alter the way you experience life, you will have to commit to consistently repeating these exercises.

Create a safe place where you can say or do whatever you need, and jump in head-first!
Self-Coaching Exercise 1 - Anger
We have found that the most effective method for dealing with anger is using a punching bag. Lay the bag on the floor in front of you and position yourself on your knees. The idea is that you yell and punch the bag at the same time, but there are a few things you need to make sure you do.

1. Raise your arm backwards and up behind your head - this opens the chest. Move your whole body up off the floor as you do this. Drop your arm down to the punching bag as your body moves closer to the floor again, making contact with the side of your fist. This will prevent you from hurting your knuckles.

2. Inhale as you draw back and exhale as you hit the bag. This makes it easier to yell at the same time you punch. Being vocal is essential - this will not work if you don't yell and scream. Start by exhaling very loudly with a 'huh' as you hit the bag. You can then build up to yelling.

3. Start slowly. Spend five minutes alternating arms, working at about 60 per cent of capacity (both physically and emotionally). Then step it up - another five minutes at about 80 per cent - this should be louder and harder. The next step is to really let go - let the bag have it. Go at 100 per cent until you are exhausted. Yell as loud as you can, hit as hard as you can, and allow the anger to surge through you.

4. When you feel like you have nothing left, get vertical again. Stay on your knees, but straighten up. Close your eyes and spend five minutes breathing deeply.
If you don't like using a punching bag, you can make a pile of pillows in front of you - just make sure there are enough that you don't end up punching the floor and hurting yourself.
Self-Coaching Exercise 2 - Sadness
If you do the punching bag exercise, you may find you get sad once you have expressed enough anger. This is normal and natural. The best thing to do with sadness is let yourself feel it. Cry - for as long as you need to. Many people don't allow themselves to express sadness because they feel that if they start crying they will never stop. This is not true. Like all buckets, this one has a bottom, and if you just let yourself, you will find it.

Find a trigger for your sadness - sad movies do it for most people. The best thing to do is take the time to do the punching bag exercise first and let the sadness surface after the anger.

Once you trigger yourself, get on the floor. Position yourself on all fours - elbows and knees supporting you. Hang your head, and let the tears come. Move a little as you cry; a simple rocking motion is enough. It is very important that you don't freeze up. You may like to have someone be with you during this exercise, but it is imperative that you choose someone who will allow you to cry without trying to stop you or make you feel better. They can place their hand on your back, or get on the floor next to you, and rock with you.

Cry until the tears run out. It may take a while, but you will eventually get the same sense of completion you felt with the anger exercise. Spend five minutes breathing deeply when you finish.

Self-Coaching Exercise 3 - Written Expression
We have discussed the importance of expressing your emotions. Most people talk about how they feel with trusted friends or partners, but what do you do when they aren't available? Or when it's too hard to say it out loud? What do you do when it's not safe for you to open yourself to someone else?

Write. Writing as a method of expression is certainly nothing new. People have been writing their experiences in journals for centuries.

Scientific research now links written expression with good physical and psychological health. Several studies have found that writing about emotional experiences has a direct relationship with well-being. Interestingly, the more emotion-laden the writing, the more health benefits were observed.
When we feel stressed, it usually indicates that several different emotions are jumbled together and trying to get out. Emotional writing involves an effort to sort through these feelings, name them, and express how they are affecting us.

1. Sift through your feelings - you might need to close your eyes and remember the situation. Pick them out one at a time until there is none left.

2. Identify the emotions - name them.

3. Write about how you are experiencing these emotions - what thoughts are connected to them?

4. Focus only on how you feel - the facts are meaningless in this context.

Don't think too much, just let the words flow. Bring to mind a stressful or troubling time in your life. It could be a situation at work, or at home, maybe even in the grocery shop - something that bothered you. Current research recommends twenty minutes of writing emotion-laden words.

Here is an example of written emotional expression:
Every time I think about it I get a burning sensation in my stomach. It's like a story that never ends...huh, story. What an interesting word - this is not a story. Stories start with 'once upon a time' and have happy endings. This is more like a nightmare. A scary, terrifying nightmare I can't wake up from. When I was young I would jump into bed with my parents if I had a nightmare. I found comfort lying with them in their big cosy bed. There is no one here to comfort me now. I feel so alone. And scared. What if I can't do it? What if it gets worse? Could it be worse? I don't know. That scares me even more. My head pounds. Thoughts are racing through my mind. I want to yell and scream and stomp my feet. But I can't, all I can do is cry. I feel like that's all I ever do now - just cry. Even as I write this I have tears streaming down my face. Hot and salty, they make familiar tracks down my face. My eyes are tired and sore. Burning. I wish I could sleep. Wow, sleep would be so nice. Maybe if I could sleep then I could wake up and realise it was all just a dream. But this is not a dream. It is my reality, so I will have to find a way to live with it. A small part of me knows I can. The rest of me is scared to death. Terrified. There are so many questions, so much uncertainty. Sometimes I want to hide - it seems like it would be easy and safe. But I will find a way. I have no idea how, but I will. I have to focus. I don't know what I need to do. I feel lost. Self-Coaching Exercise 4 - Drawing
Many people say they are not good with words and therefore find the writing exercise difficult. This exercise applies the same principles through a different medium.

1. Get yourself some paper and coloured crayons. You can use pencils, but crayons tend to work best.

2. Bring to mind a situation you feel emotional about.

3. Draw your feelings. You don't need to draw an actual picture; in fact abstract drawings tend to be far more common in emotional expression. Don't think; just let your hands create whatever you feel.

If you aren't sure what to draw, explore your emotion. What does it feel like? Anger often feels heavy or dark. Joy tends to evoke brighter colours and more flowing lines. Remember - there is no right or wrong.

If you find yourself resistant to exploring your emotions, consider this: most societies encourage the suppression of difficult or hurt feelings. Choking back tears and looking cool in spite of our anger or fear is often judged as courageous, and a symbol of strength and good breeding. These cultural attitudes are often reinforced by experiences in early childhood, which teach us that suppressing our hurt feelings is sensible. At an early age, you may have learned that by expressing them you were putting yourself in danger of being shouted at, laughed at, hit or rejected, and you were likely to hurt other people, emotionally or physically, whom you needed or loved. You may have also witnessed (and indeed felt) plenty of evidence that when other people expressed their hurt, the results could be painful and dangerous.

So, like many other people, you may have reached adulthood thinking that even the safest and most natural forms of expression such as crying, trembling or foot-stamping are: bad-mannered, uncivilised, childish, unmanly, unfeminine, unprofessional, hurtful, dangerous, and may be even sinful.

If you have not had enough practice in discharging hurt feelings, expression may at first seem unnatural and may provoke anxiety in you, because it will feel 'awkward' as well as 'wrong'.

But stay with it! Remember, the healing is in the expression of the feeling.

Therefore, we need to actually recall these feelings and let them return to our senses - deliberately. When I say this, most people think I sound like I am stark raving mad. But, as we say in our clinical work, "If what you've been doing has delivered want you want out of life, what are you doing here?"

You'll need help to get started so here are a few tips in the "how to" category:

1. You will be pre-programmed to make the feelings go away so be prepared to feel stuck. "I just don't seem to be able to get angry right now" is pretty normal. This is one of the few areas where "fake it til you make it" is a great idea!

2. Set aside time when you can be safe from disturbances.

3. Get support if you need it. A close friend who understands what you are working on and who knows that they are not there to "fix" you is ideal.

4. Bring the emotion up deliberately by thinking about the person, the situation or the event that created the drama in the first place.

5. You will need to have a bit of a yell, scream, cry or moan to get going. As you do so, turn towards the feeling with a view to exploring it. This means discovering where it is, what it wants to do, where it wants to go, how it sits, what colour it is, whether its is moving or still, how much water it would hold, whether it has a name, is it shiny or dull, blunt or sharp, round or square.

6. Persist with this 'observation' knowing that you don't need to understand the feeling, rationalise it or make it go away. After all, if it went away you wouldn't be able to explore it any more!

7. Observe yourself observing. You'll notice that the feeling will naturally dissipate and lose its grip on you. We call this 'getting un-hijacked'. It is the difference between being a victim of the sensations and observing/exploring them.

8. Notice that underneath all the drama and petrol fed fire, is the real you. Calm, enquiring, inquisitive, peaceful and powerful.

For most people this transformation happens in minutes. In our clinical work we see people heal themselves in an hour, even when the trauma is decades old. It might now be easier to understand why I said, "We are mental midgets when it comes to emotions".

Would you trade an hour of discomfort for twenty years of agony, guilt, shame and fear? Or would you do what most Aussies do and pray that time heals all wounds?

Obviously it doesn't.

Our experience is that people who swallow some brave pills and tackle the task described above, on more than one occasion, learn to pull off the technique on the fly as they go through life. Imagine what it would be like to know that nothing could upset you. That you can maintain an inner core of peacefulness and tranquillity that allows you to impact on the circumstances around you rather than be disturbed by the events of the day.
A quick note regarding getting stuck:
Remind yourself that decades of habitual emotional repression can convince us that we don't know how we feel. This is not the truth! We 'know' but we have blocked access to knowledge of that information as a way of protecting ourselves.

I'm reminded of a client who came to one of our workshops and got right into some anger work on a punching bag. He went away relieved, grateful and uplifted. Twenty years later a heart attack brought him back. He was keen to know if there was some 'lack of love' in his life. I suggested that he was still angry and he gasped, "But I got rid of all that last time I was here!" Perhaps he did - but what are the chances that some events in the intervening twenty years needed clearing?

Just describe the sensations in your body as a beginning point. You'll be stunned at how quickly these sensations begin to be described (by you) in emotional terms.

What most people won't do is set aside a time in their diary to do the work described above. We labour under the misapprehension that if we expressed an emotion some time ago - we are 'fixed' with regard to it. If you are keen to make the most of your potential, you'll need to make emotional 'work' a regular fixture in your life. After all, if it's been the most neglected aspect of your triangle, doesn't it make sense that it will need extra effort - not less? Set aside time to heal yourself before you need the help of the medical profession to do it for you.

Once you have done enough emotional 'work' you will arrive at he conclusion that you can chose how you feel at any time, any place and under any circumstances. Extraordinary as it may seem, most of us get this concept at some level - we just need the method for avoiding falling into the trap of being hijacked by strong emotions. You have one such method described above.

Combine this ability to choose how you want to feel with the concept of detachment and what you get is complete emotional mastery. You will come to understand one of life's great truisms as demonstrated by people like Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa. You can be in gaol for 29 years or own nothing but the clothes on your back and still be full of gratitude and awe at the beauty of life as it presents itself moment by magical moment.

This is the fastest method for creating what you want. That is, to not 'need' it.
As we say in our financial world, "The guy who gets the deal is the one who doesn't need it."

Once you free yourself of your needs (because you can supply them all to yourself, by yourself) you are master of everything around you. It will all respond to your intentions and you will truly understand the law of attraction. At this point in your life you'll be able to 'think it' and it will appear.

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All Subconscious Blockages Are Suppressed Emotions | Global Success Academy

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For all our education and wisdom, most of us are mentally challenged when it comes to emotions. Anyone can see that not expressing them is a disaster of epic proportions waiting to happen.

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Tyng, Chai M “The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory.”

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Tyng, Chai M “The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory.”

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The article refers to emotion as “a complex set of interactions between subjective and objective variables that are mediated by neural and hormonal systems” (paragraph 5). It described memories as what causes emotions to be engraved in our minds. Emotion can affect our learning and learning outcomes. How we are taught to handle our emotions will play a big role in our future. The article goes through the different types of emotions, and how they affect you physically.

This artifact helps explain the way humans are wired. Memories create emotions, emotions lead us on our decisions even when we try to be unbiased. The article explains how learning is impacted by emotion and thus helping me understand how writing outcomes are affected by emotions. It did make me wonder if we were all raised the same in some utopian world, would we experience the same?

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Centre for Intelligent Signal and Imaging Research (CISIR), Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Seri Iskandar, Malaysia

Emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention as well as motivating action and behavior. This attentional and executive control is intimately linked to learning processes, as intrinsically limited attentional capacities are better focused on relevant information. Emotion also facilitates encoding and helps retrieval of information efficiently. However, the effects of emotion on learning and memory are not always univalent, as studies have reported that emotion either enhances or impairs learning and long-term memory (LTM) retention, depending on a range of factors. Recent neuroimaging findings have indicated that the amygdala and prefrontal cortex cooperate with the medial temporal lobe in an integrated manner that affords (i) the amygdala modulating memory consolidation; (ii) the prefrontal cortex mediating memory encoding and formation; and (iii) the hippocampus for successful learning and LTM retention. We also review the nested hierarchies of circular emotional control and cognitive regulation (bottom-up and top-down influences) within the brain to achieve optimal integration of emotional and cognitive processing. This review highlights a basic evolutionary approach to emotion to understand the effects of emotion on learning and memory and the functional roles played by various brain regions and their mutual interactions in relation to emotional processing. We also summarize the current state of knowledge on the impact of emotion on memory and map implications for educational settings. In addition to elucidating the memory-enhancing effects of emotion, neuroimaging findings extend our understanding of emotional influences on learning and memory processes; this knowledge may be useful for the design of effective educational curricula to provide a conducive learning environment for both traditional "live" learning in classrooms and "virtual" learning through online-based educational technologies.

Introduction

Emotional experiences are ubiquitous in nature and important and perhaps even critical in academic settings, as emotion modulates virtually every aspect of cognition. Tests, examinations, homework, and deadlines are associated with different emotional states that encompass frustration, anxiety, and boredom. Even subject matter influences emotions that affect one's ability to learn and remember. The usage of computer-based multimedia educational technologies, such as intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) and massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are gradually replacing traditional face-to-face learning environments, is increasing. This may induce various emotional experiences in learners. Hence, emotional influences should be carefully considered in educational courses design to maximize learner engagement as well as improve learning and long-term retention of the material ( Shen et al., 2009). Numerous studies have reported that human cognitive processes are affected by emotions, including attention ( Vuilleumier, 2005), learning and memory ( Phelps, 2004; Um et al., 2012), reasoning ( Jung et al., 2014), and problem-solving ( Isen et al., 1987). These factors are critical in educational domains because when students face such difficulties, it defeats the purpose of schooling and can potentially render it meaningless. Most importantly, emotional stimuli appear to consume more attentional resources than non-emotional stimuli ( Schupp et al., 2007). Moreover, attentional and motivational components of emotion have been linked to heightened learning and memory ( Pekrun, 1992; Seli et al., 2016). Hence, emotional experiences/stimuli appear to be remembered vividly and accurately, with great resilience over time.

Recent studies using functional neuroimaging techniques detect and recognize human emotional states and have become a topic of increasing research in cognitive neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and educational psychology to optimize learning and memory outcomes ( Carew and Magsamen, 2010; Um et al., 2012). Human emotions comprise complex interactions of subjective feelings as well as physiological and behavioral responses that are especially triggered by external stimuli, which are subjectively perceived as "personally significant." Three different approaches are used to monitor the changes in emotional states: (1) subjective approaches that assess subjective feelings and experiences; (2) behavioral investigations of facial expressions ( Jack and Schyns, 2015), vocal expressions ( Russell et al., 2003), and gestural changes ( Dael et al., 2012); and (3) objective approaches via physiological responses that include electrical and hemodynamic of the central nervous system (CNS) activities ( Vytal and Hamann, 2010) in addition to autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses such as heart rate, respiratory volume/rate, skin temperature, skin conductance and blood volume pulses ( Li and Chen, 2006). The CNS and ANS physiological responses (brain vs. body organs) can be objectively measured via neuroimaging and biosensors and are more difficult to consciously conceal or manipulate compared to subjective and behavioral responses. Although functional neuroimaging enables us to identify brain regions of interest for cognitive and emotional processing, it is difficult to comprehend emotional influences on learning and memory retrieval without a fundamental understanding of the brain's inherent emotional operating systems.

The aim of this current article was to highlight an evolutionary approach to emotion, which may facilitate understanding of the effects of emotion on learning and memory. We initially present the terminology used in affective neuroscience studies, describe the roles of emotion and motivation in learning and memory, and outline the evolutionary framework and the seven primary emotional system. This is followed by the emotional-cognitive interactions in the various brain regions that are intimately involved in emotion and memory systems. This is performed to define the congruent interactions in these regions are associated with long-term memory (LTM) retention. We then discuss the emerging studies that further our understanding of emotional effects deriving from different modalities of emotional content. This is followed by a discussion of four major functional neuroimaging techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), electroencephalography (EEG), and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We then present the important factors for consideration in experimental design, followed by a description of psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety, which are emotionally charged dysfunctions that are strongly detrimental to cognitive performance. Our review ends with concluding remarks on the current issues and future research possibilities with respect to the efficient enhancement of educational practices and technologies.

Emotions, Moods, Feelings, Affects and Drives

Subjective terms used in affective neuroscience include emotions, moods, feelings, affects and drives. Although emotion has long been studied, it bears no single definition. A review of 92 putative definitions and nine skeptical statements ( Kleinginna and Kleinginna, 1981) suggests a definition with a rather broad consensus:

Emotions describe a complex set of interactions between subjective and objective variables that are mediated by neural and hormonal systems, which can (a) give rise to affective experiences of emotional valence (pleasure-displeasure) and emotional arousal (high-low activation/calming-arousing); (b) generate cognitive processes such as emotionally relevant perceptual affect, appraisals, labeling processes; (c) activate widespread psychological and physiological changes to the arousing conditions; and (d) motivate behavior that is often but not always expressive, goal-directed and adaptive.

Although this definition may be adequate for everyday purposes, it does not encompass some important aspects of emotional systems such as how emotions operate to create subjectively experienced feelings and how they control personality dimensions. Accordingly, Panksepp (1998) suggested the following:

Emotions are the psychoneural processes that are influential in controlling the vigor and patterning of actions in the dynamic flow of intense behavioral interchanges between animals as well as with certain objects that are important for survival. Hence, each emotion has a characteristic "feeling tone" that is especially important in encoding the intrinsic values of these interactions, depending on their likelihood of either promoting or hindering survival (both in the immediate "personal" and long-term "reproductive" sense). Subjective experiential-feelings arise from the interactions of various emotional systems with the fundamental brain substrates of "the self," that is important in encoding new information as well as retrieving information on subsequent events and allowing individuals efficiently to generalize new events and make decisions.

He went further to propose seven primary emotional systems/prototype emotional states, namely SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY that represent basic foundations for living and learning.

Moods last longer than emotions, which are also characterized by positive and negative moods. In contrast, feelings refer to mental experiences that are necessarily valence, either good or bad as well as accompanied by internal physiological changes in the body, specifically the viscera, including the heart, lungs, and gut, for maintaining or restoring homeostatic balances. Feelings are not commonly caused emotions. Because the generation of emotional feelings requires a neural re-mapping of different features of the body state in the CNS, resulting from cognitive "appraisal" where the anterior insular cortex plays a key integrative role ( Craig and Craig, 2009; Damasio and Carvalho, 2013). Nonetheless, Panksepp (2005) has defended the view that emotional operating systems (caudal and medial subcortical brain regions) appeared to generate emotional experiences via localized electrical stimulation of the brain stimulation (ESB) rather dependent on changes of the external environment or bodily states. Affects are subjective experienced emotional feelings that are difficult to describe, but have been linked to bodily states such as homeostatic drives (hunger and thirst) and external stimuli (visual, auditory, taste, touch, smell) ( Panksepp, 2005). The latter are sometimes called "core affect," which refers to consciously accessible elemental processes involving pleasure and arousal that span bipolar dimensions ( Russell and Barrett, 1999). In addition, a "drive" is an inherent action program that is responsible for the satisfaction of basic and instinctual (biologically pre-set) physiological needs, e.g., hunger, thirst, libido, exploration, play, and attachment to mates ( Panksepp, 1998); this is sometimes called "homeostatic drive." In brief, a crucial characteristic shared by emotion, mood, feeling, affect and drive is their intrinsic valence, which lies on the spectrum of positive and negative valence (pleasure-displeasure/goodness-badness). The term emotion exemplifies the "umbrella" concept that includes affective, cognitive, behavioral, expressive and physiological changes; emotion is triggered by external stimuli and associated with the combination of feeling and motivation.

Recent Evidence Regarding the Role of Emotion in Learning and Memory

The impact of emotion on learning processes is the focus of many current studies. Although it is well established that emotions influence memory retention and recall, in terms of learning, the question of emotional impacts remains questionable. Some studies report that positive emotions facilitate learning and contribute to academic achievement, being mediated by the levels of self-motivation and satisfaction with learning materials ( Um et al., 2012). Conversely, a recent study reported that negative learning-centered state (confusion) improve learning because of an increased focus of attention on learning material that leads to higher performances on post tests and transfer tests ( D'Mello et al., 2014). Confusion is not an emotion but a cognitive disequilibrium state induced by contradictory data. A confused student might be frustrated with their poor understanding of subject matter, and this is related to both the SEEKING and RAGE systems, with a low-level of activation of rage or irritation, and amplification of SEEKING. Hence, motivated students who respond to their confusion seek new understanding by doing additional cognitive work. Further clarification of this enhances learning. Moreover, stress, a negative emotional state, has also been reported to facilitate and/or impair both learning and memory, depending on intensity and duration ( Vogel and Schwabe, 2016). More specifically, mild and acute stress facilitates learning and cognitive performance, while excess and chronic stress impairs learning and is detrimental to memory performance. Many other negative consequences attend owing to overactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which results in both impaired synaptic plasticity and learning ability ( Joëls et al., 2004). Nonetheless, confounding influences of emotions on learning and memory can be explained in terms of attentional and motivational components. Attentional components enhance perceptual processing, which then helps to select and organize salient information via a "bottom-up" approach to higher brain functions and awareness ( Vuilleumier, 2005). Motivational components induce curiosity, which is a state associated with psychological interest in novel and/or surprising activities (stimuli). A curiosity state encourages further exploration and apparently prepares the brain to learn and remember in both children and adults ( Oudeyer et al., 2016). The term "surprising" might be conceptualized as an incongruous situation (expectancy violation) refers to a discrepancy between prior expectations and the new information; it may drive a cognitive reset for "learned content" that draws one's attention.

Similarly, emotionally enhanced memory functions have been reported in relation to selective attention elicited by emotionally salient stimuli ( Vuilleumier, 2005; Schupp et al., 2007). During the initial perceptual stage, attention is biased toward emotionally salient information that supports detection by the salient input. Thus, stimulating selective attention increases the likelihood for emotional information to become encoded in LTM storage associated with a top-down control in sensory pathways that are modulated by the frontal and parietal cortices. This is an example of an indirect influence on perception and attention that regulates selective sensory processing and behavioral determination ( Vuilleumier, 2005). Because the human sensory systems have no capacity to simultaneously process everything at once, which necessitates attentional mechanisms. Top-down attentional processing obtains adequate attentional resource allocation to process emotional valence information for encoding and retrieval via cooperation with the brain regions such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus, along with the primary visual cortex (helps to realize both emotion and conceptualization). Similarly, experimental studies have examined the phenomenon by using various attentional tasks, including filtering (dichotic listening and Stroop task), search (visual search), cuing (attentional probe, spatial cuing) and attentional blink [rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)] paradigms ( Yiend, 2010). These investigations demonstrated biased attentional processing toward emotionally stimulating material content attended by increased sensory responses. One study reported that emotional stimuli induce a "pop-out" effect that leads to the attentional capture and privileged processing ( Öhman et al., 2001). Moreover, a study using the RSVP paradigm compared healthy subjects with a group of patients with bilateral amygdala damage. The results revealed that healthy subjects exhibited increased perception and attention toward emotional words compared to patients, indicating that the amygdala plays a crucial role in emotional processing ( Anderson and Phelps, 2001). In addition, functional neuroimaging showed that the insular cortex, the secondary somatosensory cortex, the cingulate cortex and nuclei in the tegmentum and hypothalamus are the brain regions that regulate attentional focus by integrating external and internal inputs to create emotional feeling states, thus modulating a motivational state that obtains homeostasis ( Damasio et al., 2000). All emotional systems associated with strong motivational components such as psychological salient bodily need states operate through the SEEKING system that motivates appetitive/exploratory behavior to acquire resources needed for survival ( Montag and Panksepp, 2017).

The distinction between emotion and homeostasis, is the process of regulation for continuously changing internal states via appropriate corrective responses that respond to both internal and external environmental conditions to maintain an optimal physiological state in the body. Homeostatic affects, such as hunger and thirst, are not considered prototype emotional states. Because homeostatic affects have never been mapped using ESB that arouse basic emotional responses ( Panksepp, 2005, 2007). However, emotional prototypes can be thought of as evolutionary extensions/predictions of impending homeostatic threats; for example, SEEKING might be an evolutionary extension of intense hunger and thirst (the major sources of suffering that signal energy depletion to search for food and water intake) ( Watt, 2012). Homeostatic imbalances engage the mesolimbic motivational system via hypothalamic interactions with the extended trajectory of the SEEKING system [centrally including the lateral hypothalamus, ventral basal ganglia, and ventral tegmental area (VTA)]. It is the distributed functional network that serves the general function of finding resources for survival that gets hungry animals to food, thirsty animals to water, cold animals to warmer environments, etc. ( Panksepp, 1998). To summarize, both emotion and motivation are crucial for the maintenance of psychological and physiological homeostasis, while emotional roles are particularly important in the process of encoding new information containing emotional components. The latter increases attention toward salient new information by selectively enhancing detection, evaluation, and extraction of data for memorization. In addition, motivational components promote learning and enhance subsequent memory retrieval while generalizing new events consequent to adaptive physiological changes.

The Evolutionary Framework of Emotion and the Seven Primary Emotional Systems

Evolution built our higher minds (the faculty of consciousness and thoughts) on a foundation of primary-process of emotional mechanism that preprogrammed executive action systems (the prototype emotions) rely on cognitive processing (interpretation) and appraisal in the organisms attempt to decipher the type of situation they might be in; in other words, how to deal with emotionally challenging situations, whether it is a play situation or a threat situation (where RAGE and FEAR might be the appropriate system to recruit). Emotion offers preprogrammed but partially modifiable (under the secondary process of learning and memory) behavioral routines in the service of the solution of prototypical adaptive challenges, particularly in dealing with friend vs. foe; these routines are evolutionary extensions of homeostasis and embed a prediction beyond the current situation to a potentially future homeostatic benefit or threat. Thus, evolution uses whatever sources for survival and procreative success. According to Panksepp and Solms (2012), key CNS emotional-affective processes are (1) Primary-process emotions; (2) Secondary-process learning and memory; and (3) Tertiary-process higher cognitive functions. Fundamentally, primary emotional processes regulate unconditioned emotional actions that anticipate survival needs and consequently guide secondary process via associative learning mechanisms (classical/Pavlovian and instrumental/operant conditioning). Subsequently, learning process sends relevant information to higher brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex to perform tertiary cognition process that allows planning for future based on past experiences, stored in LTM. In other words, the brain's neurodevelopment trajectory and "wiring up" activations show that there is a genetically coded aversion to situations that generate RAGE, FEAR and other negative states for minimizing painful things and maximizing pleasurable kinds of stimulation. These are not learned- all learning (secondary-process) is piggybacked on top of the "primary-process emotions" that are governed by "Law of Affect" (see Figure 1). What now follows is an explanation of these CNS emotional-affective processing sub-levels and their inter-relationships.

FIGURE 1. Shows the nested hierarchies of circular emotional control and cognitive regulation for "bottom-up" influences and "top-down" regulations. The schematic shows conceptual relationships between primary processes of emotional system (lower brain function), as well as secondary processes of cognitive system and tertiary processing (higher brain function). Primary emotional processing for homeostatic, sensory and emotional affects facilitate secondary learning and memory processing via the "SEEKING" system that promotes survival and reproductive success (bottom-up instinctual influences). As secondary processes are continually integrated with primary emotional processing, they mature to higher brain cognitive faculties to generate effective solutions for living and subsequently exert top-down regulatory control over behavior. The primary emotional processing is mediated by complex unconditioned emotional responses (evolutionary "memories") through "Law of Affect"; sometimes called "reinforcement principle" that explains how the brain emotional networks control learning. This bi-circular causation for higher brain functionality is coordinated by lower brain functions [adapted from ( Panksepp and Solms, 2012)].

Primary-Process Emotions (Prototype Emotional States)

The emotional operating system is an inherited and genetically encoded circuitry that anticipates key survival and homeostatic needs. Thus, animals and humans share primary emotional network at the subcortical level, which includes the midbrain's periaqueductal grey (PAG) and VTA, basal ganglia (amygdala and nucleus accumbens), and insula, as well as diencephalon (the cingulate and medial frontal cortices through the lateral and medial hypothalamus and medial thalamus). Subcortical brain regions are involved in three sub-components of affects: (1) core emotional feelings (fear, anger, joy and various forms of distress); (2) homeostatic drives/motivational experiences (hunger and thirst); and (3) sensory affects (pain, taste, temperature and disgust). Primary-process emotions are not unconscious. Strong emotion is intrinsically conscious at least in the sense that it is experienced even if we might mislabel it, or animal clearly is not able to attach a semantic label-these are simply not realistic standards for determining whether something is conscious or not conscious. Nonetheless, the emotional experiences guide behavior to promote survival and procreative success as well as mediate learning (' rewarding' and ' punishing ' learning effects) and thinking at secondary and tertiary levels.

Secondary-Process Emotions (Learning and Memory)

Primary emotional systems guide associative learning and memory (classical/operant conditioning and emotional habit) processes via the mediation of emotional networks. This includes the basal ganglia (basolateral and central amygdala, nucleus accumbens, thalamus and dorsal striatum), and the medial temporal lobe (MTL) including hippocampus as well as the entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex, and parahippocampal cortices that responsible for declarative memories. Thus, secondary processes of learning and memory scrutinize and regulate emotional feelings in relation to environmental events that subsequently refine effective solutions to living.

Tertiary-Process Emotions (Higher Cognitive Functions)

Higher cognitive functions operate within the cortical regions, including the frontal cortex for awareness and consciousness functions such as thinking, planning, emotional regulation and free-will (intention-to-act), which mediate emotional feelings. Hence, cognition is an extension of emotion (just as emotion is an extension of homeostasis aforementioned). Tertiary processes are continually integrated with the secondary processes and reach a mature level (higher brain functions) to better anticipating key survival issues, thus yielding cognitive control of emotion via "top-down" regulation. In other words, brain-mind evolution enables human to reason but also regulate our emotions.

Psychologist Neisser (1963) suggested that cognition serves emotion and homeostatic needs where environmental information is evaluated in terms of its ability to satisfy or frustrate needs. In other words, cognition is in the service of satisfying emotional and homeostatic needs. This infers that cognition modulates, activates and inhibits emotion. Hence, emotion is not a simple linear event but rather a feedback process that autonomously restores an individual's state of equilibrium. More specifically stated, emotion regulates the allocation of processing resources and determines our behavior by tuning us to the world in certain biased ways, thus steering us toward things that "feel good" while avoiding things that "feel bad." This indicates that emotion guides and motivates cognition that promotes survival by guiding behavior and desires according to unique goal orientation ( Northoff et al., 2006). Therefore, the CNS maintains complex processes by continually monitoring internal and external environments. For example, changes in internal environments (contraction of visceral muscles, heart rate, etc.) are sensed by an interoceptive system (afferent peripheral nerves) that signals the sensory cortex (primary, secondary and somatosensory) for integration and processing. Thus, from an evolutionary perspective, human mental activity is driven by the ancient emotional and motivational brain systems shared by cross-mammalians that encode life-sustaining and life-detracting features to promote adaptive instinctual responses. Moreover, emotional and homeostasis mechanisms are characterized by intrinsic valence processing that is either a positive/pleasure or negative/displeasure bias. Homeostasis imbalance is universally experienced as negative emotional feelings and only becomes positively valenced when rectified. Hence, individuals sustain bodily changes that underlie psychological (emotional) and biological (homeostatic) influences on two sides, i.e., one side is oriented toward the survival and reproductive success that is associated with positively valenced emotional and physiologic homeostasis (anticipatory response) and the other responds to survival and reproductive failure associated with negatively valenced emotional and physiologic homeostasis (reactive response). Consequently, cognition modulates both emotional and homeostatic states by enhancing survival and maximizing rewards while minimizing risk and punishments. Thus, this evolutionary consideration suggests the brain as a 'predictive engine' to make it adaptive in a particular environment. Figure 2 demonstrates this cyclic homeostatic regulation.

FIGURE 2. Conceptually maps the homeostatic regulation of internal and external inputs that affect cognition, emotion, feeling, and drive: Inputs → Homeostasis ↔ Emotion ∗ ↔ Cognition. This lead to the experience of one's self via overt behavior that is biased by a specific emotion stimulated by bodily changes that underlie psychological/physiological states. ∗Represents emotion associated with a combination of feeling and motivation/drive; ↔ indicates a bi-directional interaction; and → indicates a one-directional relationship. Adapted from Damasio and Carvalho (2013).

Panksepp (1998) identified seven primary emotional systems that govern mammalian brains as follows: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY. Here, we use UPPERCASE letters to denote unconditional emotional responses (emotional primes). These primary emotional neural networks are situated in the subcortical regions; moreover, the evidence demonstrates that decortication leaves primary emotional systems intact ( Panksepp et al., 1994). Hence, cortical regions are non-essential for the generation of prototype emotional states but are responsible for their modulation and regulation. The present article emphasizes SEEKING because it is the most fundamental of the primary emotional systems and is crucial for learning and memory. The SEEKING system facilitates learning because when fully aroused, it fills the mind with interest that then motivates the individual to search out and learn things that they need, crave and desire. Accordingly, SEEKING generates and sustains curiosity's engagement for a particular purpose while also promoting learning via its mediation of anticipatory eagerness ( Oudeyer et al., 2016). In other words, the SEEKING system has been designed to automatically learn by exploring anything that results in acquired behavioral manifestations for survival operations, all the way from the mesolimbic-mesocortical dopamine system through to the prefrontal cortex (PFC); thus, it is intimately linked with LTM formation ( Blumenfeld and Ranganath, 2007). Consequently, it is the foundation of secondary learning and higher cognitive processes when compared with the remaining six emotional systems. However, this system is less activated during chronic stress, sickness, and depression, all of which are likely to impair learning and various higher cognitions. On the other hand, overactivity of this system promotes excessively impulsive behaviors attended by manic thoughts and psychotic delusions. Moreover, massive lesion of SEEKING's neural network (midline subcortical regions-the PAG, VTA, nucleus accumbens (NAc), medial forebrain and anterior cingulate) lead to consciousness disorder, specifically akinetic mutism (AKM) syndrome that the patient appears wakeful, attentive but motionless ( Schiff and Plum, 2000; Watt and Pincus, 2004). In brief, the SEEKING system holds a critical position that optimizes the performance of emotion, motivation, and cognition processes by generating positive subjective emotional states-positive expectancy, enthusiastic exploration, and hopefulness. Because the seven primary emotional systems and their associated key neuroanatomical and key neurochemical features have been reviewed elsewhere ( Panksepp, 2011a, b), they are not covered in this review.

Emotion-Cognition Interactions and its Impacts on Learning and Memory

Studies in psychology ( Metcalfe and Mischel, 1999) and neuroscience ( Dolcos et al., 2011) proposed that cognition and emotion processes are operated at two separate but interacting systems: (i) the "cool cognitive system" is hippocampus-based that is associated with emotionally neutral cognitive functions as well as cognitive controls; and (ii) the "hot emotional system" is amygdala-based that responsible for emotional processing and responses toward unconditioned emotional stimuli such as appetitive and fear-evoking conditions. In addition, an early view of a dorsal/ventral stream distinction was commonly reported between both systems. The dorsal stream encompasses the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and lateral parietal cortex, which are involved in the cool system for active maintenance of controlled processes such as cognitive performance and the pursuit of goal-relevant information in working memory (WM) amidst interference. In contrast, the hot system involves the ventral neural system, including the amygdala, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) as well as orbitofrontal (OFC) and occipito-temporal cortex (OTC), all of which encompass emotional processing systems ( Dolcos et al., 2011). Nonetheless, recent investigations claim that distinct cognitive and emotional neural systems are not separated but are deeply integrated and contain evidence of mediation and modulation ( Dolcos et al., 2011; Okon-Singer et al., 2015). Consequently, emotions are now thought to influence the formation of a hippocampal-dependent memory system ( Pessoa, 2008), exerting a long-term impact on learning and memory. In other words, although cognitive and affective processes can be independently conceptualized, it is not surprising that emotions powerfully modify cognitive appraisals and memory processes and vice versa. The innate emotional systems interact with higher brain systems and probably no an emotional state that is free of cognitive ramifications. If cortical functions were evolutionarily built upon the pre-existing subcortical foundations, it provides behavioral flexibility ( Panksepp, 1998).

In addition to amygdala-hippocampus interactions, one study reported that the PFC participates in emotional valence (pleasant vs. unpleasant) processing during WM ( Perlstein et al., 2002). Simons and Spiers (2003) also reviewed studies of interactions between the PFC and MTL during the memory encoding and retrieval processes underlying successful LTM. They demonstrated that the PFC is crucial for LTM because it engages with the active maintenance of information linked to the cognitive control of selection, engagement, monitoring, and inhibition. Hence, it detects relevant data that appears worthwhile, which is then referred for encoding, thus leading to successful LTM ( Simons and Spiers, 2003). Consistent findings were reported for recognition tasks investigated by fMRI where the left PFC-hippocampal network appeared to support successful memory encoding for neutral and negative non-arousing words. Simultaneously, amygdala-hippocampus activation was observed during the memory encoding of negative arousing words ( Kensinger and Corkin, 2004). Moreover, Mega et al. (1996) proposed two divisions for the limbic system: (i) the paleocortex division (the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, temporal polar and anterior insula), and (ii) the archicortical division (the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex). The first component is responsible for the implicit integration of affects, drives and object associations; the second deals with explicit sensory processing, encoding, and attentional control. Although divided into two sub-divisions, the paleocortex and archicortical cortex remain integrated during learning. Here, the paleocortex appears to manage the internal environment for implicit learning while integrating affects, drives, and emotions. Simultaneously, the archicortical division appears to manage external environment input for explicit learning by facilitating attention selection with attendant implicit encoding. To some extent, the paleocortex system might come to exercise a supervisory role and link the ancient affective systems to the newer cognitive systems.

Amygdala-Hippocampus Interactions

The findings of previous studies suggest that the amygdala is involved in emotional arousal processing and modulation of the memory processes (encoding and storage) that contribute to the emotional enhancement of memory ( McGaugh et al., 1996; Richter-Levin and Akirav, 2000). Activation of the amygdala during the encoding of emotionally arousing information (both pleasant/unpleasant) has been reported that correlates with subsequent recall. Because of the interaction between basolateral complex of the amygdala (BLA) with other brain regions that are involved in consolidating memories, including the hippocampus, caudate nucleus, NAc, and other cortical regions. Thus, BLA activation results from emotionally arousing events, which appear to modulate memory storage-related regions that influence long-term memories ( McGaugh, 2004). Memory consolidation is a part of the encoding and retention processes where labile memories of newly learned information become stabilized and are strengthened to form long-lasting memories ( McGaugh, 2000). Moreover, the amygdala transmits direct feedback/projection along the entire rostral-caudal cortices to the visual cortex of the ventral stream system, including primary visual (V1) and temporal cortices ( Amaral et al., 2003); furthermore, the amygdala activates the frontal and parietal regions during negative emotion processing that are involved in attention control. Consequently, during emotional processing, direct projections from the amygdala to sensory cortices enhance attentional mechanism might also allow the parallel processing of the attentional (fronto-parietal) system ( Vuilleumier, 2005). This suggests that amygdala activation is associated with enhanced attention and is a part of how salience enhances information retention.

Prefrontal Cortex-Hippocampus Interaction

The PFC is located in the foremost anterior region of the frontal lobe and is associated with higher-order cognitive functions such as prediction and planning of/for the future ( Barbey et al., 2009). Moreover, it is thought to act as a control center for selective attention ( Squire et al., 2013), and also plays a critical role in WM as well as semantic processing, cognitive control, problem-solving, reasoning and emotional processing ( Miller and Cohen, 2001; Yamasaki et al., 2002). The PFC is connected to sub-cortical regions in the limbic system, including the amygdala and various parts of the MTL ( Simons and Spiers, 2003). Its involvement in WM and emotional processing are intimately connected with the MTL structures that decisively affect LTM encoding and retrieval ( Blumenfeld and Ranganath, 2007) in addition to self-referential processing ( Northoff et al., 2006). Structurally, the PFC is divided into five sub-regions: anterior (BA 10), dorsolateral (BA 9 and 46), ventrolateral (BA 44, 45, and 47), medial (BA 25 and 32) and orbitofrontal (BA 11, 12, and 14) ( Simons and Spiers, 2003).

The mPFC has been associated with anticipatory responses that reflect cognitive expectations for pleasant/unpleasant experiences (appraising rewarding/aversive stimuli to generate emotional responses) ( Ochsner et al., 2002; Ochsner and Gross, 2005). Specifically, increased mPFC activation has been noted during reappraisal and is associated with the suppressed subjective experience of negative emotions. Furthermore, an fMRI study revealed concurrent activation levels of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) with emotional valence when processing emotional stimuli: (i) activation was associated with positive valence, and (ii) deactivation was associated with negative valence ( Heinzel et al., 2005). Similarly, emotional and non-emotional judgment task using the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS) demonstrated increased activation of the mPFC, specifically both ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dmPFC during emotional judgment when compared with non-emotional judgment. However, an inverse relationship was observed in the lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC and DLPFC) during non-emotional judgment ( Northoff et al., 2004). These findings suggested reciprocal interactions between cognitive and emotional processing between dorsal and lateral neural systems when processing emotional and cognitive tasking demands ( Bartolic et al., 1999).

Other studies reported strong cognition-emotion interactions in the lateral prefrontal cortex with increased activity in the DLPFC, which plays a key role in top-down modulation of emotional processing ( Northoff et al., 2004; Comte et al., 2014). This indicates increased attentional control of regulatory mechanisms that process emotional content. For instance, one study reported that cognitive task appeared to require active retention in WM, noting that the process was influenced by emotional stimuli when subjects were instructed to remember emotional valence information over a delay period ( Perlstein et al., 2002). Their findings revealed increased activation in the right DLPFC in response to pleasant IAPS pictures, but with an opposite effect in response to unpleasant pictures (decreased activity in the right DLPFC). This could be interpreted as increased WM-related activity when processing positive emotional stimuli, thus leading to positive emotion maintenance of stimulus representation in WM. Furthermore, they observed that the DLPFC contributed to increased LTM performance linked to stronger item associations and greater organization of information in WM during pleasant compared to unpleasant emotion ( Blumenfeld and Ranganath, 2006).

TABLE 1. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) sub-regions, corresponding Brodmann areas, and associated cognitive-emotional functions.

Effects Deriving From Different Modalities of Emotional Stimuli on Learning and Memory

As discussed above, evidence indicates the neural mechanisms underlying the emotional processing of valence and arousal involve the amygdala and PFC, where the amygdala responds to emotionally arousing stimuli and the PFC responds to the emotional valence of non-arousing stimuli. We have thus far primarily discussed studies examining neural mechanisms underlying the processing of emotional images. However, recent neuroimaging studies have investigated a wider range of visual emotional stimuli. These include words ( Sharot et al., 2004), pictures ( Dolcos et al., 2005; Weymar et al., 2011), film clips ( Cahill et al., 1996), and faces ( González-Roldan et al., 2011), to investigate neural correlates of emotional processing and the impact of emotion on subsequent memory. These studies provided useful supplemental information for future research on emotional effects of educational multimedia content (combination of words and pictures), an increasingly widespread channel for teaching and learning.

An event-related fMRI study examined the neural correlates of responses to emotional pictures and words in which both were manipulated in terms of positive and negative valence, and where neutral emotional content served as a baseline ("conditioned stimuli"/no activating emotion with valence rating of 5 that spans between 1/negative valence-9/positive valence), even though all stimuli were consistent in terms of arousal levels ( Kensinger and Schacter, 2006). Subjects were instructed to rate each stimulus as animate or inanimate and common or uncommon. The results revealed the activation of the amygdala in response to positive and negative valence (valence-independent) for pictures and words. A lateralization effect was observed in the amygdala when processing different emotional stimuli types. The left amygdala responded to words while either the right and/or bilateral amygdala activation regions responded to pictures. In addition, participants were more sensitive to emotional pictures than to emotional words. The mPFC responded more rigorously during the processing of positive than to that of negative stimuli, while the VLPFC responded more to negative stimuli. The researchers concluded that arousal-related responses occur in the amygdala, dmPFC, vmPFC, anterior temporal lobe and temporo-occipital junction, whereas valence-dependent responses were associated with the lateral PFC for negative stimuli and the mPFC for positive stimuli. The lateralization of the amygdala's activation was consistent with that in other studies that also showed left-lateralized amygdala responses for words ( Hamann and Mao, 2002) vs. right-lateralized amygdala responses for images ( Pegna et al., 2005). However, a wide range of studies suggest that lateralization likely differs with sex ( Hamann, 2005), individual personality ( Hamann and Canli, 2004), mood ( Rusting, 1998), age ( Allard and Kensinger, 2014), sleep ( Walker, 2009), subject's awareness of stimuli ( Morris et al., 1998), stress ( Payne et al., 2007) and other variables. Hence, these factors should be considered in future studies.

Khairudin et al. (2011) investigated effects of emotional content on explicit memory with two standardized stimuli: emotional words from the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) and emotional pictures from the IAPS. All stimuli were categorized as positive, negative or neutral, and displayed in two different trials. Results revealed that better memory for emotional images than for emotional words. Moreover, a recognition test demonstrated that positive emotional content was remembered better than negative emotional content. Researchers concluded that emotional valence significantly impacts memory and that negative valence suppressed the explicit memory. Another study by Khairudin et al. (2012) investigated the effects of emotional content on explicit verbal memory by assessing recall and recognition for emotionally positive, negative and neutral words. The results revealed that emotion substantially influences memory performance and that both positive and negative words were remembered more effectively than neutral words. Moreover, emotional words were remembered better in recognition vs. recall test.

Another group studied the impacts of emotion on memory using emotional film clips that varied in emotion with neutral, positive, negative and arousing contents ( Anderson and Shimamura, 2005). A subjective experiment for word recall and context recognition revealed that memory, for words associated with emotionally negative film clips, was lower than emotionally neutral, positive and arousing films. Moreover, emotionally arousing film clips were associated with enhanced context recognition memory but not during a free word recall test. Therefore, clarifying whether emotional stimuli enhance recognition memory or recall memory requires further investigation, as it appears that emotional information was better remembered for recognition compared to recall. In brief, greater attentional resource toward emotional pictures with large late positive waves of LPP in the posterior region, the amygdala responds to emotional stimuli (both words and pictures) independent on its valence, leading to enhanced memory. Table 2 summarizes studies on the brain regions that respond to standardized stimuli as cited above, and also for pictures of emotional facial expression or Pictures of Facial Affect (POFA), Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for emotional words, as well as for the International Affective Digitized Sound System (IDAS) for emotional sounds.

TABLE 2. Comparison of different emotional stimulus categories.

Neuroimaging Techniques for the Investigation of Emotional-Cognitive Interactions

The brain regions associated with cognitive-emotional interactions can be studied with different functional neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, PET, and fNIRS) to examine hemodynamic responses (indirect measurement). EEG is used to measure brain electrical dynamics (direct measurement) associated with responses to cognitive and emotional tasks. Each technique has particular strengths and weaknesses, as described below.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging is a widely used functional neuroimaging tool for mapping of brain activation as it provides a high spatial resolution (a few millimeters). fMRI is an indirect measure of hemodynamic response by measuring changes in local ratios of oxy-hemoglobin vs. deoxy-hemoglobin, typically known as a blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal ( Cabeza and Nyberg, 2000). Dolcos et al. (2005) examined the effects of emotional content on memory enhancement during retrieval process using event-related fMRI to measure retrieval-related activity after a retention interval of 1 year. The researchers concluded that successful retrieval of emotional pictures involved greater activation of the amygdala as well as the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus than that of neutral pictures. Both the amygdala and hippocampus were rigorously activated during recollection compared to familiarity recognition, whereas no differences were found in the entorhinal cortex for either recollection or familiarity recognition. Moreover, a study investigates motivation effect (low vs. high monetary reward) on episodic retrieval by manipulating task difficulty, fMRI data reports that increased activation in the substantia nigra/VTA, MTL, dmPFC, and DLPFC when successful memory retrieval with high difficulty than with low difficulty. Moreover, reward-related of functional connectivities between the (i) SN/VTA-MTL and (ii) SN/VTA-dmPFC appear to increases significantly with increases retrieval accuracy and subjective motivation. Thus, Shigemune et al. (2017) suggest that reward/motivation-related memory enhancement modulated by networking between the SN/VTA (reward-related), dmPFC (motivation-related) and MTL (memory-related) network as well as DLPFC (cognitive controls) with high task difficulty.

Taken together, these findings indicate that the amygdala and MTL have important roles in the recollection of emotional and motivational memory. Another fMRI study reported that greater success for emotional retrieval (emotional hits > misses) was associated with neural activation of the bilateral amygdala, hippocampus, and parahippocampus, whereas a higher success rate for neutral retrieval is associated with a greater activity in right posterior parahippocampus regions ( Shafer and Dolcos, 2014). Hence, fMRI has clearly revealed interactions between cognitive and emotional neural networks during information processing, particularly in response to emotion-related content. Such interactions appear to modulate memory consolidation while also mediating encoding and retrieval processes that underlie successful LTM formation and memory recall. More specifically, it appears that amygdala activation modulates both the hippocampus and visual cortex during visual perception and enhances the selection and organization of salient information via the "bottom-up" approach to higher cognitive functions directed at awareness. Although fMRI is widely used, it poses several limitations such as poor temporal resolution, expensive setup costs, plus the difficulty of having a subject hold still during the procedure in an electromagnetically shielded room (immobility). Furthermore, fMRI is slightly more metabolically sluggish, as BOLD signal exhibits an initial dip, where the increase of subsequent signal is delayed by 2-3 s and it takes approximately 6-12 s to reach to a peak value that reflects the neural responses elicited by a stimulus ( Logothetis et al., 2001). This means that fMRI having a coarse temporal resolution (several seconds) when compared with electrophysiological techniques (a few milliseconds) and also not a great technique for visualizing subcortical regions (mesencephalon and brainstem) due to metabolically sluggish compared to PET.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Positron emission tomography is another functional neuroimaging tool that maps CNS physiology and neural activation by measuring glucose metabolism or regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). PET uses positron-emitting radionuclides such as ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and positron-emitting-oxygen isotope tagged with water ([ ¹⁵O] H ₂O), etc. This technique identifies different neural networks involving pleasant, unpleasant and neutral emotions ( Lane et al., 1997). It thus far appears that increased rCBF in the mPFC, thalamus, hypothalamus, and midbrain associated with pleasant and unpleasant emotional processing, while unpleasant emotions are more specifically associated with the bilateral OTC, cerebellum, left parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, and amygdala; moreover, the caudate nucleus is associated with pleasant emotions.

Using PET scanning demonstrated that emotional information enhances visual memory recognition via interactions between perception and memory systems, specifically with greater activation of the lingual gyrus for visual stimuli ( Taylor et al., 1998). The results also showed that strong negative emotional valence appeared to enhance the processing of early sensory input. Moreover, differences in neural activation appeared in the left amygdaloid complex (AC) during encoding, while the right PFC and mPFC responded during recognition memory. Similarly, Tataranni et al. (1999) identified CNS regions associated with appetitive states (hunger and satiation) ( Tataranni et al., 1999). Hunger stimulated increased rCBF uptake in multiple regions including the hypothalamus, insular cortex, limbic and paralimbic regions (anterior cingulate cortex, parahippocampal and hippocampal formation, the anterior temporal and posterior orbitofrontal cortex), as well as the thalamus, caudate, precuneus, putamen, and cerebellum. Satiation was associated with increased rCBF uptake in the bilateral vmPFC, the DLPFC, and the inferior parietal lobule. These results imply that (i) subcortical regions associated with emotion/motivation involved in hunger that signals distressing feeling (discomfort, pain and anxiety) for the regulation of food intake; and (ii) the PFC associated with inhibition of inappropriate behavioral response involved in satiation that signals excessive food consumption for a termination of meal.

In a study of emotional self-generation using PET noted that the insular cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex, and hypothalamus, as well as the cingulate cortex and nuclei in the brainstem's tegmentum, including PAG, parabrachial nucleus, and substantia nigra maintained current homeostasis by generating regulatory signals ( Damasio et al., 2000). PET scanning has also been used for neuroanatomical mapping of emotions ( Davidson and Irwin, 1999), emotional processing ( Choudhary et al., 2015), and cognitive functions ( Cabeza and Nyberg, 2000). Although PET scanning has a relatively good spatial resolution for both the brain and bodily functions, it is costly and yields lower temporal resolution than does EEG and is invasive as opposed to fMRI. Moreover, PET tends to show better activation of more ancient brain regions in the mesencephalon and brainstem when compared to fMRI. Hence, it is generally reserved for the clinical diagnoses of cancers, neurological diseases processes (e.g., epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease), and heart diseases.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Electroencephalography obtains high temporal resolution in milliseconds, portable, less expensive, and non-invasive techniques by attaching scalp electrodes to record brain electrical activity. Moreover, numerous studies reported that EEG is useful in mapping CNS cognitive and emotional processing. The technique offers a comprehensive range of feature extraction and analysis methods, including power spectral analysis, EEG coherence, phase delay, and cross-power analysis. One study examined changes in EEG oscillations in the amygdala during the consolidation of emotionally aroused memory processing that exhibited theta (4-8 Hz) activity ( Paré et al., 2002), indicating the facilitation of memory consolidation, improved retention of emotional content, and enhanced memory recall. This finding was later supported by the revelation of increased theta activity in the right frontal ( Friese et al., 2013) and right temporal cortices ( Sederberg et al., 2003) and consequently associated with the successful encoding of new information. Another study ( Buzsáki, 2002) revealed that theta oscillations were positively related to the activation of the hippocampus represent the active brain state during sensory, motor and memory-related processing. The theta waves are generated through an interaction between the entorhinal cortex, the Schaffer collateral (CA3 region) and the pyramidal cell dendrites (both CA3 and CA1 regions) that result in a synaptic modification underlie learning and memory. Thus, theta oscillation is thought to be associated with the encoding of new memories.

Electroencephalography studies have also revealed alpha asymmetry over prefrontal regions during withdrawal/avoidance processing. Electrophysiological responses showed increased alpha-band activity in the right vs. left PFC when subjects viewed film clips with withdraw-related negative emotional content ( Papousek et al., 2014). EEG alpha wave power is inversely related to cortical activity, that is, a lower alpha power associated with higher activity (inhibition). Because of this cortical inhibition consideration, researcher ( Davidson, 1988) introduces frontal asymmetry index by computing a ratio of differences in log-transformation power values between the left frontal and right frontal alpha power or , and the selection of electrodes is the homologous pairs (F3-F4/F7-F8). Thus, positive value indicates left frontal activity that associated with positive emotion/approach motivation and negative value indicates right frontal activity that associated with negative emotion/withdrawal motivation. In other words, greater right alpha power (right frontal activation ↓) than left alpha power (left frontal activation ↑) results in left frontal activity and vice versa. Another study reported greater alpha activity in the left frontal region (less left frontal alpha power) was associated with approach motivation, while the greater alpha activity in right frontal (less right frontal alpha power) was associated with withdrawal motivation ( Harmon-Jones et al., 2010). Hence, these findings indicate that EEG alpha asymmetry may be used to assess "approach" (positive valence) vs. "withdrawal" (negative valence) motivational processes and/or emotional responses during learning. However, anger is associated with approach motivation (but negative valence) state appeared to have a greater left frontal activity compared with positively valenced approach motivation (happiness) ( Harmon-Jones and Gable, 2017). Because of inconsistencies of valence hypothesis and motivational direction hypothesis, a study proposed asymmetry inhibition model of alpha activity with two mechanisms of inhibitory executive control to regulate emotional distraction processing: (i) left PFC inhibits processing of negative/withdrawal-related distractors and (ii) right PFC inhibits processing of positive/approach-related distractors ( Grimshaw and Carmel, 2014). Because of there is a strong inverse association between alpha and the fronto-parietal network, which increase of alpha activity associated with a decrease fronto-parietal activity that reflects the executive control mechanism inhibits interference from irrelevant emotional distractors.

Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy is an emerging and relatively low-cost imaging technique that is also portable and non-invasive. It can be used to map the hemodynamic responses associated with brain activation. This technology measures cerebral changes in the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) vs. deoxygenated hemoglobin (deoxy-Hb) using optodes (light emitters and detectors) placed on the scalp ( Villringer et al., 1993). It is limited to visualizations of cortical activity compared to the subcortical regions, and findings only imply increased brain activity associated with increased glucose and oxygen consumption. Elevations in cerebral blood flow and oxygen delivery exceed quo oxygen consumption, thereby enabling changes in local cerebral blood oxygenation to be measured by optic penetration.

The number of studies that have implemented this investigative technique are associated with task performance ( Villringer et al., 1993), including exercise ( Perrey, 2008), cognitive workload ( Durantin et al., 2014), psychiatric disorders ( Ehlis et al., 2014), emotional processing ( Bendall et al., 2016), and aging ( Hock et al., 1995). One study used fNIRS to examine the relationship between subjective happiness and emotional changes ( Oonishi et al., 2014). The results revealed that the level of subjective happiness influenced the pattern of left-right PFC activation during the emotion-related task, showing increased oxy-Hb in the left PFC when viewing pleasant pictures, and increased oxy-Hb in the right PFC when viewing unpleasant pictures. Viewing unpleasant emotional stimuli accompanied increased in oxy-Hb levels in the bilateral VLPFC while also activating several regions in both the right VLPFC (BA45/47) and left VLPFC (BA10/45/46/47). However, another fNIRS study reported that viewing pleasant emotional stimuli was associated with decreased oxy-Hb in the left DLPFC (BA46/10) when affective images were presented for 6 s ( Hoshi et al., 2011). Thus, this study found an opposite pattern indicating left hemisphere involvement in positive/approach processing and right hemisphere involvement in negative/withdrawal processing ( Davidson, 1992; Davidson and Irwin, 1999). This inconsistent finding of frontal hemispheric asymmetric might result from the comparison of state-related changes rather than baseline levels of asymmetric. Thus, several issues should take into consideration: (i) methodological issues to assess hemispheric asymmetry, including requires repeat measures of anterior asymmetry for at least two sessions, stimulus content should comprise both positive valence and negative valence while maintaining at a similar level of arousal and with a baseline resting condition, appropriate selection of reference electrode and individual differences, etc; and (ii) conceptual issues is related to the fact that prefrontal cortex is an anatomically and functionally heterogeneous and complex region interacts with other cortical and subcortical structures during emotional processing ( Davidson, 2004). Another fNIRS study examined the relationship between PFC function and cognitive control of emotion ( Ozawa et al., 2014). This was done by presenting emotional IAPS pictures for 5.2 s, followed by the n-back task. The results revealed a significantly greater increase in oxy-HB in the mPFC and left superior frontal gyrus in response to negative pictures compared with neutral pictures. Meanwhile, no significant hemodynamic changes were observed during image presentation and the n-back task, indicating the need for further investigation.

Factors Affecting the Effect of Emotion on Learning and Memory

The preceding section described neuroimaging techniques used to examine brain responses to emotional stimuli during WM processing leading to LTM. This section presents six key factors that are recommended for consideration in the experimental design and appropriate protocol.

Individual Differences

A number of studies have reported numerous influences in addition to a range of individual differences in emotional processing. These include personality traits ( Montag and Panksepp, 2017), intellectual ability ( Brackett et al., 2004), and sex ( Cahill, 2003). Moreover, sex hormones and personality traits (e.g., extraversion and neuroticism) appear to influence individual responses to emotional stimuli as well as modulate emotional processing. Appropriate screening with psychological testing as well as balancing experimental cohorts in terms of sex can help reduce spurious results owing to individual differences.

Age-Related Differences

Studies have also shown that older adults are associated with the greater familiarity with psychological stress and emotional experiences, thus causing positivity biases in emotional processing and better emotional control than in younger adults ( Urry and Gross, 2010; Allard and Kensinger, 2014). Consequently, the age of participants in a sample population should be considered for both cognitive and emotional studies.

Emotional Stimulus Selection

The selection of emotional stimuli for experimental studies is generally divided into two streams: (1) discrete emotional, and (2) dimensional emotions of valence, arousal, dominance and familiarity ( Russell, 1980; Barrett, 1998). The latter include pictures from the IAPS database and words from the ANEW database, which are both available for non-commercial research. Appropriate selection of emotional stimuli is another important consideration that ensures experimental tasks are suitable for the investigation of emotional processing in learning and memory. Furthermore, the type of stimulus determines stimulus presentation duration, especially for experimental tasks involving the induction of emotions.

Self-assessment Techniques

There are numerous self-assessment techniques used to measure individual emotional states ( Bradley and Lang, 1994). The most widely used techniques are the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM), the Semantic Differential (SD) scale, and the Likert scale. The SAM is a non-verbal pictorial assessment technique directly measures emotional responses to emotional stimuli for valence, arousal, and dominance. The SD scale consists of a set of bipolar adjective pairs for the subjective rating of image stimuli. The Likert's " x-point" scale allows participants to rate their own emotional responses. If a study does not seek to assess distinct emotional states but rather involves the assessment of two primary dimensions of emotion (positive and negative valence), then the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a recommended method ( Watson et al., 1988). Thus, selection of the most appropriate self-assessment technique is an important part of the experimental design but can also become an overwhelming task.

Selection of Brain Imaging Techniques

As mentioned above, the two major types of brain imaging techniques EEG (direct) and fMRI/PET/fNIRS (indirect) have respective advantages and disadvantages. To overcome these limitations, simultaneous or combined dual-modality imaging (EEG-fMRI or EEG-fNIRS) can now be implemented for complementary data collection. Although functional neuroimaging works to identify the neural correlates of emotional states, technologies such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) and connectivity maps might provide new opportunities to seek understanding of emotions and its corresponding psychological responses.

Neurocognitive Research Design

The neuroscience of cognition and emotion requires appropriate task designs to accomplish specific study objectives ( Amin and Malik, 2013). Environmental factors, ethical issues, memory paradigms, cognitive task difficulty, and emotional induction task intensity must be considered for this.

Numerous neuroimaging studies cited thus far have indicated that emotions influence memory processes, to include memory encoding, memory consolidation, and memory retrieval. Emotional attentional and motivational components might explain why emotional content exhibits privileged information processing. Emotion has a "pop-out" effect that increases attention and promotes bottom-up instinctual impact that enhances awareness. Significant emotional modulation affects memory consolidation in the amygdala, and emotional content also appears to mediate memory encoding and retrieval in the PFC, leading to slow rates of memory lapse accompanied by the accurate recall. Moreover, cognitive and emotional interactions also appear to modulate additional memory-related CNS regions, such as the frontal, posterior parietal and visual cortices. The latter are involved in attentional control, association information, and the processing of visual information, respectively. Therefore, higher-level cognitive functions such as learning and memory, appear to be generally guided by emotion, as outlined in the Panksepp's framework of brain processing ( Panksepp, 1998).

Neuroimaging findings also indicate the involvement of the PFC in emotional processing by indirectly influencing WM and semantic memory ( Kensinger and Corkin, 2003). This is reflected by the involvement of the DLPFC in WM and the role played by VLPFC in semantic processing, both of which have been found to enhance or impair semantic encoding task performance when emotion is involved. Various parts of the lateral PFC (ventrolateral, dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortical regions) are suspected of having key roles that support memory retrieval ( Simons and Spiers, 2003). All of these findings suggest that PFC-MTL interactions underlie effective semantic memory encoding and thus strategically mediate information processing with increased transfer to the hippocampus, consequently enhancing memory retrieval. Accordingly, learning strategies that emphasize emotional factors are more likely to result in long-term knowledge retention. This consideration is potentially useful in the design of educational materials for academic settings and informed intelligent tutoring systems.

Based on numerous previous findings, future research might take emotional factors more seriously and more explicitly in terms of their potential impact on learning. By monitoring the emotional state of students, the utilization of scientifically derived knowledge of stimulus selection can be particularly useful in the identification of emotional states that advance learning performance and outcomes in educational settings. Moreover, functional neuroimaging investigations now include single and/or combined modalities that obtain complementary datasets that inform a more comprehensive overview of neuronal activity in its entirety. For example, curiosity and motivation promote learning, as it appears cognitive network become energized by the mesolimbic-mesocortical dopamine system (generalized motivational arousal/SEEKING system). In addition, the identification of emotional impact on learning and memory potentially has direct implications for healthy individuals as well as patients with psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ( Panksepp, 2011a). To emphasize, depression and anxiety are the two most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorders associated with learning/memory impairment and pose negative consequences that (i) limit the total amount of information that can otherwise be learned, and (ii) inhibit immediate recall as well as memory retention and retrieval of newly learned information. Depression and anxiety are also associated with negative emotions such as hopelessness, anxiety, apathy, attention deficit, lack of motivation, and motor and mental insufficiencies. Likewise, neuroscience studies report that decreased activation of the dorsal limbic (the anterior and posterior cingulate) as well as in the prefrontal, premotor and parietal cortices causes attentional disturbance, while increased neural activation in the ventral paralimbic region (the subgenual cingulate, anterior insula, hypothalamus and caudate) is associated with emotional and motivational disorders ( Mayberg, 1997).

Concluding Remarks, Open Questions, and Future Directions

Substantial evidence has established that emotional events are remembered more clearly, accurately and for longer periods of time than are neutral events. Emotional memory enhancement appears to involve the integration of cognitive and emotional neural networks, in which activation of the amygdala enhances the processing of emotionally arousing stimuli while also modulating enhanced memory consolidation along with other memory-related brain regions, particularly the amygdala, hippocampus, MTL, as well as the visual, frontal and parietal cortices. Similarly, activation of the PFC enhances cognitive functions, such as strategic and semantic processing that affect WM and also promote the establishment of LTM. Previous studies have primarily used standardized emotional visual, or auditory stimuli such as pictures, words, facial expression, and film clips, often based on the IAPS, ANEW, and POFA databases for emotional pictures, words and facial expressions, respectively. Further studies have typically focused on the way individuals memorize (intentional or incidental episodic memory paradigm) emotional stimuli in controlled laboratory settings. To our knowledge, there are few objective studies that employed brain-mapping techniques to examine semantic memory of learning materials (using subject matter) in the education context. Furthermore, influences derived from emotional factors in human learning and memory remains unclear as to whether positive emotions facilitate learning or negative emotions impair learning and vice versa. Thus, several remaining questions should be addressed in future studies, including (i) the impact of emotion on semantic knowledge encoding and retrieval, (ii) psychological and physiological changes associated with semantic learning and memory, and (iii) the development of methods that incorporate emotional and motivational aspects that improve educational praxes, outcomes, and instruments. The results of studies on emotion using educational learning materials can indeed provide beneficial information for informed designs of new educational courses that obtain more effective teaching and help establish better informed learning environments. Hence, to understand how emotion influence learning and memory requires understanding of an evolutionary consideration of the nested hierarchies of CNS emotional-affective processes as well as a large-scale network, including the midbrain's PAG and VTA, basal ganglia (amygdala and NAc), and insula, as well as diencephalon (the cingulate and medial frontal cortices through the lateral and medial hypothalamus and medial thalamus) together with the MTL, including the hippocampus as well as the entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex, and parahippocampal cortices that responsible for declarative memories. Moreover, the SEEKING system generates positive subjective emotional states-positive expectancy, enthusiastic exploration, and hopefulness, apparently, initiates learning and memory in the brain. All cognitive activity is motivated from 'underneath' by basic emotional and homeostatic needs (motivational drives) that explore environmental events for survival while facilitating secondary processes of learning and memory.

Author Contributions

CMT drafted this manuscript. CMT, HUA, MNMS, and ASM revised this draft. All authors reviewed and approved this manuscript.

Funding

This research work was supported by the HiCoE grant for CISIR (Ref No. 0153CA-002), Ministry of Education (MOE), Malaysia.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ministry of Education (MOE), Malaysia for the financial support. We gratefully thank Frontiers in Psychology, Specialty Section Emotion Sciences reviewers and the journal Associate Editor, for their helpful input and feedback on the content of this manuscript.

References

Watt, D. F., and Pincus, D. I. (2004). "Neural substrates of consciousness: implications for clinical psychiatry,"in Textbook of Biological Psychiatry, ed. J. Panksepp (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley), 75-110.

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The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory

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Emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention as well as motivating action and behavior.