Moodsals

Moodsals are a proposed neuropsychological construct describing transient, self-sustaining affective states that modulate both mood and the salience of environmental stimuli. They are distinct from short-lived emotions and from general mood in that they persist beyond immediate events and bias information processing toward or away from particular cues.

The term blends mood with salience and appears in theoretical discussions of affect regulation and computational models of decision-making. Proponents argue that moodsals arise from dynamic interactions among neuromodulators such as serotonin and norepinephrine and cortical networks, particularly the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, coordinating arousal, valuation, and attention.

In models, moodsals can last from several hours to days; they influence perception, memory encoding for emotionally relevant information, and choice patterns. Operationalization is experimental: researchers examine changes in reward and aversion processing, pupillometry, and functional imaging signals in salience networks when a person holds a particular mood-sal state.

In psychology and psychiatry, moodsals have been proposed as a framework for understanding mood fluctuation in disorders such as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. Critics note overlap with existing constructs such as affect, mood regulation, and salience processing, arguing that more precise definitions and empirical validation are needed. See also: Mood, Salience, Affective neuroscience, Neuromodulation.