Chapter 10: Emotions Flashcards
What are the three components of emotion?
- Subjective feeling/experience
- Physiological pattern
- Behavioral response
What is stress?
Pattern of physiological and hormonal changes(cortisol) that disrupt homeostasis and activate sympathetic nervous system
What is mood?
Long lasting diffuse state that is characterized by enduring subjective feelings without identifiable object/trigger
What is the difference between the Papez circuit and the limbic system?
Papez circuit:
- Hypothalamus
- Anterior thalamus
- Cingulate gyrus
- Hippocampus
Limbic system:
- All above
- Amygdala
- Orbitofrontal cortex
- Parts of basal ganglia
What is the consequence of amygdala lesions?
No recognition of fear, but do understand what fear is
What is the periaqueductal gray (PAG) and what role does it play?
Coordinating emotional responses, lays in the midbrain
What are three categories of emotions?
- Basic emotions: reflected by face expression, carved by evolution
- Complex emotions: combinations of basic emotions, socially or culturally learned
- Dimensional theories of emotions: emotions that are the same but vary along dimensions (intense to mild)
What are basic emotions?
Innate emotions that are similar across humans and some animals. They are expressed with facial expressions. Can be for a short period of time.
Produce physical changes in the body and are produced by subcortical circuits
Also exist in congenitally blind people
What are complex emotions?
Combinations of basic emotions, such as jealousy and parental love. They have an extended duration and can be goal-directed
What two factors describe dimensional theories of emotion? What happens with mixed feelings?
- Valence: positive/negative or pleasant/unpleasant
- Arousal: intensity of response
Mixed feelings: Positive and negative emotions happen at the same time. Positive releases dopamine, negative releases norepinephrine
What is the James-Lange Theory of emotion?
Serial processing of:
1. Conscious perception of stimulus
2. Physiological response
3. Behavioral response
4. Cognition: interpretation of physiological response
5. Subjective emotional feeling
What is the Cannon Bard Theory of emotion?
Parallel processing of:
1: Perception of stimulus
2: Thalamus:
- Cortex produces emotional feeling
- Hypothalamus activates sympathetic nervous system
3/4 physiological response + behavioral response
What is the Lazarus/appraisal theory?
- Perception
- Cognition (quick risk-benefit appraisal)
- Emotional feeling
- Behavioral response
What is the Singer-Schachter theory?
- Perception
- Physiological response (arousal)
- Behavioral response
- Cognition: evaluating environment and physiological response
- Emotional feeling
What is the difference between Singer-Schachter theory and James-Lange theory?
SS theory: conscious reasoning for interpretation of situation and it combines arousal with context
JL theory: unconscious reasoning
What are LeDoux fast and slow roads to emotion?
- Slow
- Includes V1
- Conscious emotional feeling - Fast
- From thalamus directly to amygdala
- Fight/flight system for defensive behavior
What are the 3 main complexes of the amygdala and their respective functions?
- Basolateral nuclear complex (La+B): connection sensory input to striatum to control actions in the face of threat
- Centromedial complex (Ce): control innate emotional behaviors
- Cortical nucleus (Co): involved in olfaction and modulates memory formation
What is the kluver-bucy syndrome? What happens in the case its unilateral?
Temporal lobe surgically removed because of epilepsy
Results in:
- Hypersexuality
- No fear response
- Abusive, violent behavior
- Approaching dangerous objects
If unilateral, you can still process fear
What is the function of the amygdala? Name 4 things
- Protection (detect + avoid)
- What to do with a stimulus (attention, perception, decision making)
- Identification fear expression
- Experiencing fear
What’s the difference between amygdala and hippocampus lesions?
Amygdala: implicit expression of emotional learning
Hippocampus: necessary for explicit knowledge of emotional properties
What is for example a UCS and a CS in fear conditioning? What happens with fear conditioning when there are lesions to the amygdala?
Fear conditioning:
- UCS: painful, CS: light
- No fear conditioning with lesions to amygdala
Explain the high and low roads of fear-conditioning
- High: cortical
- Identify stimulus –> evaluation –> action - Low: subcortical
- Evolutionary shortcut thalamus to amygdala
- Ability to act quickly
What is the difference between explicit and implicit fear learning? What structures support each form of learning?
Implicit: fear conditioning
- Amygdala
Explicit: learning to fear something because we are told to do so
- Hippocampus
What is emotional tagging?
Insignificant events before an emotional event are often remembered
What is the relationship between stress and memory?
Stress can facilitate memory
What happens with damage to OFC and amygdala?
Increased risk taking. No feedback from somatic markers to help guide in decision making
What are somatic markers?
Changes in physiological arousal that guide decisionmaking in orbitofrontal cortex
What is the relationship between emotion and perception? What is attentional blink?
If there is an emotionally significant stimulus, people tend to notice it
Attentional blink = Stimuli are shortly presented so they are hard to identify. This impairs perceptual report
Does the amygdala react more to novel or familiar stimuli?
More to novel stimuli, independent of valence and arousal
Where is the insula/insular cortex located?
In sylvian fissure between temporal and frontal lobes
What is the function of the anterior insula and posterior insula? Name 4 other functions of the insula.
Anterior: knowing we experience emotions
Posterior: feelings of sexual desire
Other functions:
- interoception: perception of internal bodily states (thirst, itch)
- evaluative decisions: more risk generates more activity
- perception (positive) emotions in others
- house of all emotions
What is the difference between the amygdala and the insula?
Amygdala: selective role in affective arousal and mainly negative stimuli
Insula: broad role in integrating affective and cognitive processes
Where is disgust located and why does this region respond so heavily to it?
Located in insula
- Heavy respond because insula also perceives internal bodily states
What is likely to happen when you have a larger right insula?
Better at detecting own heartbeat, more aware of emotions and more likely to make decisions based on emotional reactions
Where does happiness produce a strong activation?
Dorsolateral PFC, cingulate cortex, inferior temporal gyrus and cerebellum
What is the similarity between happiness and sadness?
Both processed in the same network
What is flow?
Process of having an optimal experience. When you are so into something, you forget about everything else.
What neurotransmitter is important for love? What are the 3 types of love and what brain network do they use?
Dopamine
- Passionate: subcortical + high order brain areas related with cognitive functions
- Maternal: overlaps with passionate love + PAG that has connections to maternal bonding receptors
- Unconditional
What is the difference between reappraisal and suppression of emotions?
Reappraisal = reinterpreting a stimulus or situation (antecedent focused)
Suppression = inhibiting emotion expressive behavior during a situation (response focused)
What is the consequence of conscious reappraisal?
Reduction of emotional experience and decrease of negative emotions. It leads to increase in PFC activity
What is affective flexibility? What is the negativity bias of the amygdala?
Amygdala is flexible in processing relevance of stimuli depending on a person’s goals and motivation
If you don’t want to gamble and you do, amygdala is more active.
If you want to win and you win, amygdala becomes more active
Negativity bias: It’s less flexible for negative stimuli
