Affect and Emotion

Question 1

What are the basic emotion command systems?

Answer 1

• found in the more primitive parts of the brain
• seeking
• panic (with subcategories of care and lost)
• fear
• rage
• play

Question 2

What is the seeking system?

Answer 2

• function of energetic exploration to find resources to satisfy appetite
• involves dopamine neurotransmitter
• involves anatomy of mesolimbic and mesocortical pathways

Question 3

What is the panic system?

Answer 3

• function of separation distress circuits
• involves opiates and oxytocin neurotransmitters
• involves PAG to the Anterior cingulate cortex

Question 4

What is the fear system?

Answer 4

• has the function of fearing attack by persecutors
• involves glutamate neurotransmitter
• involves PAG to amygdala

Question 5

What is the rage system?

Answer 5

• function of hot rage (fight/flight) and cold rage (predatory)
• involves substance P, GABA and Ach neurotransmitters
• involves PAG to medial amygdala

Question 6

What is the play system?

Answer 6

• function of endogenous urge for ‘rough and tumble’ (for social hierarchies without injury)
• involves opiates
• involves PAG, thalamus and parietal cortex

Question 7

Interaction between panic and seeking systems?

Answer 7

• seeking system leads to exploratory behaviour which may lead to panic system activating if they go for example too far from mother
• panic system results in more proximity seeking behaviours which returns cycle back to exploratory behaviour

Question 8

How does affect become emotion?

Answer 8

• affect is primitive biological system that becomes emotion when stimuli reaches top of limbic system
• insula has function of combining interoceptive inputs (affect, hormones etc) with exteroceptive inputs (what’s happening in the outside world)

Question 9

How does egocentricity become allocentricity?

Answer 9

• babies are born unaware that their pov is one of many, egocentricity (assume world is how they see it)
• learn that mother is another person, understand that the mother has pov herself
• primary intersubjectivity (mother and baby face to face)
• secondary intersubjectivity (baby understand pov is one of many)

Question 10

How is symbolising linked to personality disorders?

Answer 10

• failure to symbolise leads to development
• symbolising requires affective engagement and relating to other stimuli
• relating leads to 1st and 3rd person position taking (triangulation)