The computational psychopathology of emotion

Abstract

Mood and anxiety disorders involve recurring, maladaptive patterns of distinct emotions and moods. Here, we argue that understanding these maladaptive patterns first requires understanding how emotions and moods guide adaptive behavior. We thus review recent progress in computational accounts of emotion that aims to explain the adaptive role of distinct emotions and mood. We then highlight how this emerging approach could be used to explain maladaptive emotions in various psychopathologies. In particular, we identify three computational factors that may be responsible for excessive emotions and moods of different types: self-intensifying affective biases, misestimations of predictability, and misestimations of controllability. Finally, we outline how the psychopathological roles of these factors can be tested, and how they may be used to improve psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological interventions.

Glossary

Emotion

a co-occurring combination of judgments, physiological responses, and behavioral tendencies that serves an adaptive function and is often evoked by, or aimed at, a specific object. Here we propose that different types of combination stem from different learning or planning computations.

Feeling

the conscious perception of an emotion. This definition of a feeling implies that emotions can occur outside of awareness.

Mood

a lasting emotional state that may lack a specific object. Here we propose that moods may comprise summations of successive emotions and thus come in as many types as there are emotions.