12 Emotional and Social Neuroscience

Question 1

Emotion - definition

Answer 1

• complex state that is triggered by external or internal events
• has a valence (positive/negative)
• involves reactions in multiple response systems, including physiological (e.g. heart rate), behavioral dispositions (e.g. running away), and subjective experiences (e.g. feeling sad)

Question 2

Feeling - definition

Answer 2

subjective experience aspect of emotion

Question 3

mood - definition

Answer 3

slowly changing and less intense emotional state without clear trigger

Question 4

sympathetic vs. parasympathetic ANS

Answer 4

• sympathetic: fight or flight
• parasympathetic: rest and digest
• peripheral arousal dimension to stress mediated by these 2 systems

Question 5

James-Lange-Theory of Emotion

Answer 5

arousing stimuli causes bodily expression causes emotion (= perception of bodily changes)
- criticism: double dissociation is possible

Question 6

Emotions and neural correlates

Answer 6

• fear: amygdala
• disgust: insula / insular cortex
• anger: anterior cingulate cortex (may be experimental artifact)
• surprise: reward processing areas such as VTA, ventral attentional network
• happiness and sadness: unclear, double dissociation between happiness and sadness in medial FPC, OFC