Research in experimental psychopathology and cognitive theories of anxiety highlight threat-related attention biases (ABs) and underpin the development of a computer-delivered treatment for anxiety disorders: attention-bias modification (ABM) training. Variable effects of ABM training on anxiety and ABs generate conflicting research recommendations, novel ABM training procedures, and theoretica...

Evolutionary theory postulates that altruistic behavior evolved for the return-benefits it bears the performer. For return-benefits to play a motivational role, however, they need to be experienced by the organism. Motivational analyses should restrict themselves, therefore, to the altruistic impulse and its knowable consequences. Empathy is an ideal candidate mechanism to underlie so-called di...

Feeding can be defined as the behavioral response necessary for replenishing energy substrates to maintain energy balance and, ultimately, the survival of all organisms. Predictably, a shortage of food sources is associated with increased motivational states that promote food seeking, as well as metabolic changes that allow for energy stores to be amassed in the form of adipose tissue. In gener...

Reinforcement learning models address animal’s behavioral adaptation to its changing “external” environment, and are based on the assumption that Pavlovian, habitual and goal-directed responses seek to maximize reward acquisition. Negative-feedback models of homeostatic regulation, on the other hand, are concerned with behavioral adaptation in response to the “internal” state of the animal, and...

In the present study, we investigated the effect of regulatory focus on bias in memory for task duration. Specifically, whether or not a person’s motivational outlook, seeking gains or avoiding losses, would cause them to overor underestimate task duration. Eighty-four college students completed an origami task for which motivational focus (gains or losses), experience with the task and amount ...

Human emotions are considered here to be founded on motivational circuits in the brain that evolved to protect (defensive) and sustain (appetitive) the life of individuals and species. These circuits are phylogenetically old, shared among mammals, and involve the activation of both subcortical and cortical structures that mediate attention, perception, and action. Circuit activation begins with...

Differentiating the ability from the motivation to act is of central importance to psychiatric disorders in general and depression in particular. However, it has been difficult to develop quantitative approaches to relate depression to poor motor performance in goal-directed tasks. Here, we use an inverse optimal control approach to provide a computational framework that can be used to infer an...

Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a region of prefrontal cortex implicated in the motivational control of behavior and in related abnormalities seen in psychosis and depression. It has been hypothesized that a critical mechanism in these disorders is the dysfunction of GABAergic interneurons that normally regulate prefrontal information processing. Here, we studied a subclass of interneurons isolat...

Evolutionary theory postulates that altruistic behavior evolved for the return-benefits it bears the performer. For return-benefits to play a motivational role, however, they need to be experienced by the organism. Motivational analyses should restrict themselves, therefore, to the altruistic impulse and its knowable consequences. Empathy is an ideal candidate mechanism to underlie so-called di...

The method of retarded potentials is used to derive the Biot-Savart law, taking into account correction that describes chaotic motion charged particles in rectilinear currents. Then this for circular currents and following theorem proved: magnetic field on rotation axis an axisymmetric body or charge distribution has only one component directed along axis, expressed through surface integral, wh...