what we callaffective goals. We interpret affects and their often-tacit goals to
beaffective schemes(Pascual-Leone, 1991). The affective goals are effects
produced by affective schemes when they are released within and ex-
pressed–manifested in the organism. Part of this expression is the occurring
physiological changes suitable for the affective tendency in question.
Purely affective processes, as we define them, seem to be initiated in brain
activities of the limbic system, of which the amygdala plays an important role
in preattentive processing of situations and in recognition of affectively sa-
lient stimuli, at least for negative affective reactions (Anderson & Phelps,
2001; Damasio, 2001; Habib, 2000; LeDoux, 1995; Rolls, 1995; Schaefer et
al., 2002). In contrast, the medial orbitofrontal cortex (ventromedial pre-
frontal region) and the anterior cingulate cortex are important in re-presenting
to consciousness pleasant or unpleasant affective values of experiences (All-
man, Hakeem, Erwin, Nimchinsky, & Hop, 2001; Bechara, Damasio, Da-
masio, & Lee, 1999; Davidson, 2001; Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli,
2002). Cognitive expression of affective goals may be related to the orbito-
frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, at least for the high cognitive
functions (Albright, Jessell, Kandel, & Posner, 2001; Davidson, 2001). For
low-cognitive or automatized cognition other brain structures, such as the
Broca language center, the insula, or the entorhinal cortex, may play a similar
role (Albright et al., 2001; Barraquer Bordas, 1995). The effortful control of
affects and emotions seems to be related to the dorsal part of anterior
cingulate gyrus,^1 the lateral and medial prefrontal regions, and perhaps also
the basal ganglia, together with the prefrontal cortex (Albright et al., 2001;
Allman et al., 2001; Ochsner et al., 2002). Interestingly, the left prefrontal
hemisphere seems to be concerned with the control of positive affects–emo-
tions, whereas the right prefrontal hemisphere deals with negative af-
fects–emotions (Davidson, 2001; Fox, Henderson, & Marshall, 2001). We
shall elaborate on this in the following.
Application–implementation of affective goals necessarily involves activa-
tion and application of cognitive schemes. In contrast to affective schemes,
which only evaluate organismic states, cognitive schemes tell organisms
about packages of resistances encountered outside or inside (bodily) reality;
they carry factual information and not evaluation. When the affective goals
are aroused and perhaps implemented, cognitive schemes must be part of it,
however; and thus affective and cognitive schemes soon become coordinated
within many different affective–emotion systems (Pascual-Leone, 1991). The
resulting hybrid schemes (i.e., affective and cognitive) are main causal deter-
202 PASCUAL-LEONE AND JOHNSON
1 1 The anterior cingulate gyrus has two parts, ventral and dorsal, which seem to be mutually in-
hibitory (Albright et al., 2001) and are concerned, respectively, with emotions and cognition;
“cognitive conflict tasks tend to reduce activity in the more ventral area of the cingulate”
(Albright et al., 2001, p. 34).