A central claim in Luiz Pessoa's (2013) book is that the terms “emotion” and “cognition” can be useful in characterizing behaviors but will not be cleanly mapped into brain regions. In order to be verified, this claim requires models for the integration and interfacing of emotion and cognition; yet, such models remain problematic.

In The Cognitive-Emotional Brain, Pessoa (2013) suggests that cognition and emotion should not be considered separately. We agree with this and argue that cognitive architectures can provide steady ground for this kind of theory integration and for investigating interactions among underlying cognitive processes. We briefly explore how affective components can be implemented and how neuroimaging measures can help validate models and influence theory development.

Four issues are discussed: (1) differences between cognition and emotion; (2) affect, emotion, and motivation differentials, including a neuropsychological model of motivation; (3) mental attention (working memory) as a resource neither affective nor cognitive, but applicable to both; and (4) explication of neuropsychological scheme units, which have neuronal circuits as functional infrastructure, thus helping to clarify the semantics of functional connectivity.

In this commentary, I argue that the cognitive-emotional framework put forward by Pessoa (2013) can be successfully applied to psychopathology and, in particular, to the reasoning of delusional subjects. More specifically, I show that the notion of executive competition (Ch. 7) offers a significant contribution to the idea that delusions may involve both executive and emotional dysfunctions.

All organisms must integrate cognition, emotion, and motivation to guide action toward valuable (goal) states, as described by active inference. Within this framework, cognition, emotion, and motivation interact through the (Bayesian) fusion of exteroceptive, proprioceptive, and interoceptive signals, the precision-weighting of prediction errors, and the “affective tuning” of neuronal representations. Crucially, misregulation of these processes may have profound psychopathological consequences.

Many of the most common neuropsychiatric disorders are marked by prominent disturbances of cognition and emotion. Characterizing the complex neural circuitry underlying the interplay of cognition and emotion is critically important, not just for clarifying the nature of the mind, but also for discovering the root causes of a broad spectrum of debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders, including anxiety, schizophrenia, and chronic pain.

Pessoa's (2013) integrative model of emotion and cognition can be strengthened in two ways: first, by clarification and refinement of key concepts and terminology, and second by the incorporation of an additional key neural system into the model, the locus coeruleus/norepinephrine system.

Pessoa's (2013) arguments imply that various leading approaches in the social sciences have not adequately conceptualized how emotion and cognition influence human decision making and social behavior. This is particularly unfortunate, as these approaches have been central to the efforts to build bridges between neuroscience and the social sciences. We argue that it would be better to base these efforts on other social theories that appear more compatible with Pessoa's analysis of the brain.

The question of automaticity in emotion processing has been debated under different perspectives in recent years. Satisfying answers to this issue will require a better definition of automaticity in terms of relevant behavioral phenomena, ecological conditions of occurrence, and a more precise mechanistic account of the underlying neural circuits.

Pessoa (2013) makes an impressive case that emotion, motivation, and cognition are neurally intertwined. Our commentary broadens the discussion to the functional, “mind” level. We argue that philosophical and computational considerations justify some modern “separatist” views. We highlight several psychological phenomena that illustrate independence, including affective and motivational reactions to rudimentary inputs, and the guiding role of such reactions in cognition.

In the précis to The Cognitive-Emotional Brain, I summarize a framework for understanding the organization of cognition and emotion in the brain. Here, I address six major themes that emerged in the commentaries: (1) emotional perception and automaticity; (2) the status of cognition and emotion: together or separate? (3) evolutionary implications for the understanding of emotion and cognition; (4) the diverse forms of cognitive-emotional integration; (5) dual process theories; and (6) functional diversity of brain regions/networks and cognitive ontologies. The central argument is, again, that cognition and emotion are so highly interactive, and indeed integrated, that these two elements blend into a new amalgam.

The well-replicated observation that many people maintain mental health despite exposure to severe psychological or physical adversity has ignited interest in the mechanisms that protect against stress-related mental illness. Focusing on resilience rather than pathophysiology in many ways represents a paradigm shift in clinical-psychological and psychiatric research that has great potential for the development of new prevention and treatment strategies. More recently, research into resilience also arrived in the neurobiological community, posing nontrivial questions about ecological validity and translatability. Drawing on concepts and findings from transdiagnostic psychiatry, emotion research, and behavioral and cognitive neuroscience, we propose a unified theoretical framework for the neuroscientific study of general resilience mechanisms. The framework is applicable to both animal and human research and supports the design and interpretation of translational studies. The theory emphasizes the causal role of stimulus appraisal (evaluation) processes in the generation of emotional responses, including responses to potential stressors. On this basis, it posits that a positive (non-negative) appraisal style is the key mechanism that protects against the detrimental effects of stress and mediates the effects of other known resilience factors. Appraisal style is shaped by three classes of cognitive processes – positive situation classification, reappraisal, and interference inhibition – that can be investigated at the neural level. Prospects for the future development of resilience research are discussed.

The PASTOR framework needs to be reconciled with existing research on positive illusions, which finds that positive appraisals of stressors have a short shelf life as a mechanism of resilience, do not draw on costly executive functioning, and rely on neural networks that are distinct from those found in studies of experimentally instructed reappraisal or value.

Little work has focused on resilience amongst older adults, and few factors have been identified that promote their resilience. Kalisch et al. suggest that socioenvironmental factors are distant influences. We argue, however, that community and societal influences are as important as individual ones. Further, an ecological framework explains why some older adults are resilient whilst others are not.

Kalisch and colleagues present a conceptual framework for the study of resilience, using a neurobiological approach. The present commentary examines issues arising for the study of resilience from epidemiological data, which suggest that resilience is most likely a normative function that may operate as a kind of psychological immune system. The implications of the epidemiological data on the development of a neurobiological theory of resilience are discussed.

We argue that social psychology has unique potential for advancing understanding of resilience. An exciting development that illustrates this is the emergence of social-psychological interventions – brief, stealthy, and psychologically precise interventions – that can yield broad and lasting benefits by targeting key resilience mechanisms. Such interventions provide a causal test of resilience mechanisms and bring about positive change in people's lives.

The target article asserts that resilience results from a generalized tendency to appraise stressful circumstances positively. Apparently unbeknownst to the authors, essentially the same idea has been advanced before and studied extensively from a different research perspective. This raises a broader issue: the critical need, when projects attempt to span disciplines, to fully examine work from all relevant backgrounds.

Developing prospective models of resilience using the translational and transdiagnostic framework proposed in the target article is a challenging endeavor and will require large-scale data sets with dense intraindividual temporal sampling and innovative analytic methods.

Genetic, endocrinological, and psychological evidence demonstrates that resilience commonly trades off with sensitivity. The existence of such trade-offs indicates that resilience bears costs as well as benefits, and that some disorders can best be conceptualized in terms of extremes of trade-offs rather than expression of deficits. Testing for cognitive trade-offs should be a priority for psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, and genetics.

Kalisch et al. posit that a positive appraisal style is the key to resilience. I will argue instead that the adaptiveness of a particular emotion-regulation strategy is determined by contextual factors. Hence, a positive appraisal style might not always result in positive consequences and is most likely not the only mediator of resilience.