Biology and Personality Part One Flashcards
What is the relationship between the brain and its environment?
The relationship between the brain and its environment works in both directions: biology affects environment and environment (learning, experience, context) changes biology
How is Understanding the brain and behavior connected?
Understanding the brain can help us understand behavior, but understanding behavior can also help us understand the brain
What does the Amygdala do?
Links perceptions and thoughts with memory and emotional meaning
What is the amygdala’s role?
Role is assessing whether a stimulus is threatening (possibly if it is rewarding, this is less clear)
The Amygdala: Relevant Traits Include…
anxiety, fearfulness, sociability, sexuality, optimism
What is something the amygdala has relevance to?
motivation
Relevant to Motivation Example
Whitman murders at University of Texas in 1966: had a malignant tumor next to the amygdala, which may have caused his motivation to murder his wife, mother, himself, and 14 others without understanding why he wanted to do this
What is the function of the frontal lobe and neocortex?
Higher cognitive functions: abstract reasoning, ethics, hypotheticals
How are emotions sorted in your brain?
Pleasant emotions (left) and unpleasant emotions (right) (sort of—anger seems more of a left FC thing. But complicated because of inhibition, excitation, and processing functions make it difficult to interpret brain activity/behavior relationships. Plus, the right hemisphere in general appears to handle processing of emotional stimul
Which side of the brain is approach and which side is withdrawal?
Approach (left) and withdrawal (right)
Which side of the brain is inhibition of reactions to unpleasant stimuli
left
What do the The Frontal Lobes and Neocortex do?
Lateral specialization and integration
What is the Somatic marker hypothesis
idea that the bodily (or somatic), emotional component of thought is a necessary part of problem solving and decision making (the prefrontal and especially the orbital cortex important in integrating emotion and cognition— critical to self concept and to problem-solving and decision-making
Give Examples of Social Understanding and Self-Control
Phineas Gage (1848): personality changed in a negative way (fitful, irreverent, impatient, obstinate), less emotional, could not hold a job, made unwise decisions
Someone with brain damage might not be able to…
to understand others’ emotions or regulate own impulses and feelings (disinhibition), unable to make appropriate decisions (compromised judgment and executive functions
What is Negative emotions and cooperativeness
People prone to negative emotions have an especially high level of activity in the prefrontal cortex; People who are cooperative have high activity when interacting with others
What is the Role in Self-enhancement?
when this area was temporarily shut-off, self-descriptions were less positive than in a control condition
Cognition and emotion are…
mutually reliant and defining
What is the capgras syndrome?
belief that loved ones have been replaced, follows injury to right frontal lobe; possible explanation is that people fail to respond emotionally to their loved ones and therefore conclude they must not be the same people