Recent studies of the emotional brain have opened new doors to the understanding of human behavior, character development, relationships, happiness and well being. Recent research has shown that the development of “emotional brain” is dependent on “relationship,” initially parent and child relations. Aside from an individual’s relation with the parents, the human mind has been engaged historica...

Emotional signals are of pivotal relevance in social interactions. Neuroimaging and lesion studies have established an important role of the amygdala for the processing of these signals. While the human amygdala receives input from all sensory modalities, it is the visual modality that is most important for emotional aspects in social interactions. Consequently, amygdala involvement in visual e...

BACKGROUND Even in the absence of heavy alcohol use, youth with familial alcoholism (family history positive [FHP]) exhibit atypical brain functioning and behavior. Although emotional and cognitive systems are affected in alcohol use disorders (AUDs), little attention has focused on whether brain and behavior phenotypes related to the interplay between affective and executive functioning may be...

Very preterm birth (VPT; < 32 weeks of gestation) has been associated with an increased risk to develop cognitive and socio-emotional problems, as well as with increased vulnerability to psychiatric disorder, both with childhood and adult onset. Socio-emotional impairments that have been described in VPT individuals include diminished social competence and self-esteem, emotional dysregulation, ...

To study emotional aging is to study a very multi-faceted concept. In particular, the study of emotion and aging covers a wide range of topics. Taking a closer look, domains of functioning can be differentiated such as pertaining to the experiential nature of emotion or its regulation, as well as social-cognitive processes associated with the perception of emotion in others or emotion-related a...

The perception of pain can be significantly modulated by the behavioral context. Here, we investigated how contextual modulations of pain are subserved in the human brain. We independently modulated the attentional and emotional context of painful stimuli and recorded brain activity by using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Our results confirm that attention to pain and a negative emotion...