The interaction of emotion with cognition is shown through sad facial
expressions. The review highlights the neurobiological
basis of the interaction and shows that it takes place at many levels of information processing like perception, attention, action and working memory. Emotions play a significant role in aiding the survival of an organism, hence it is also capable of altering the plasticity of the cortex so as to enhance the detection of the emotionally charged biologically relevant stimulus. This adaptive process can sometimes lead to erroneous learning and thus associate harmless stimuli with affective conditions like sadness that could lead to maladaptive coping on the part of the organism. The review throws light on the biological underpinnings of such learning process and has implications for therapeutic efforts based on it. It also shows that damage to the amygdala, which is an important structure for emotional processing, can also result in affective disorders. The attempt is not exhaustive and there is scope for adding more details to the analysis by bringing in other emotions and different modes of communication for those emotions.
Keywords: cognition; emotion; neurobiology; cognitive intervention; information processing