6. Emotional processing Flashcards
Phineas gage
1848
Pole through orbitofrontal cortex.
Changes in personality- gambling, sex and aggression etc
Evolution of emotion
Charles Darwin 1872
common evolution due to ability of humans and animals to express emotion
Charles bell
Disagreed. Humans expression of emotion is a unique thing
Series of facial expressions
Paul Eckman
series of photos of facial expressions to asses cultural universality.
Good recognition of all primary emotions across cultures
Emotional asymmetry
Right hemisphere is more dominant for emotion
Left side of face is more expressive
Animals tend to show let side when rearing to fight
Theories of emotion
4 of them
Common sense theory
Perception –> fear –> run
James-Lange theory (1884-1887)
Perception–> run–> fear
Stresses importance of bodily feelings- Ie gut feeling = butterflies
Cannon-bard (1927)
Run and fear are processed independently
Decorticate animals still have emotional responses
Biopsychological
Bodily feedback modulates emotion- interactive theory
(Essentially Damasio 1996)
Sham rage
1920s
Decorticating cats respond aggressively to even the smallest stimuli
No regulation from PFC- emotion purely from hypothalamus
Response not seen if hypothalamus removed
Kluver-Bucy syndrome
1939
Anterior temporal lobes removed from monkeys
Increased eating and sexual behaviour
Lack of normal fear response
Similar response in humans, emotional blunting
Moniz
1949
Nobel prize for lobotomy operations to treat psychiatric patient
Catatonic state, no emotional response
Not so much after 1950 and introduction of drugs
Cognitive emotional (social) interaction
Le Doux
Cognitive and emotion systems are overlapping
Fear should be an adaptive response to help animals survive, but is overactive in humans causing stress
Bechara
1994
IOWA gambling task
Damage to VMPFC results in poor decision making, no test for this yet
Developed gambling task
Choice of 4 packs of cards associates with immediate rewards or punishments etc
VMPFC patients are insensitive to future consequences, guided by immediate prospects only
VMPFC patients did not change over the repeated tests whereas normal controls got better at the task- presumably developed more specific somatic markers for the test and therefore improved
To check why they got their results, they reversed it so immediate punishment occurred- VMPFC patients were more influenced by this. Neither more sensitive to positive or negative therefore just general insensitivity to future consequences
Damasio
1996
Somatic marker hypothesis
Our brain turns physiological reactions into emotions.
These emotions over time become associated with events
= somatic markers
These are triggered when experiencing an event again and the net affective state influences our decisions.
VMPFC patients have poor decision making, therefore hypothesise that they are unable to form somatic markers.
TESTS:
SCR to emotional stimuli: px showed no emotional recognition
IOWA GAMBLING: they choose more immediate rewards (as per Bechara)
SCR & IOWA: found that normal participants had an anticipatory SCR before choosing a card (somatic marker) which influenced their decisions. This was ABSENT in VMPFC patients
PFC asymmetry
LEFT: mediate positive mood (damage leads to depression)
RIGHT: mediate negative mood (mania and decreased pain)
Morris et al
2001
Visual subcritical pathways are involved in emotion recognition
Responsible for processing written emotion in text or email
Antithesis
Opposites in expression of emotion
Eg aggression : arched back and tail up
Submission: bowing/ low position
