Emotion Flashcards
affect
either a discrete emotion that has relatively short duration or a more diffuse, longer-lasting state such as stress or mood
affective flexibility
the ability to process the relevance of various emotional stimuli, depending on one’s current goals and motivation
amygdala
The amygdala, in the medial temporal lobe, processes emotions. It has 3 complexes:
Basolateral: Sensory input → Action control (threat response).
Ventromedial: Innate behaviors & physiological responses.
Cortical: Olfactory input → Memory modulation (emotionally arousing situations).
attentional blink
a phenomenon often observed during rapid serial presentations of visual stimuli, in which a second salient target that is presented between 150 and 450 ms after the first one goes undetected
basic emotion
an emotion with unique characteristics, carved by evolution, and reflected through facial expressions
complex emotion
a combination of basic emotions that can be identified as an evolved, long-lasting feeling. some complex emotions may be socially or culturally learned
core emotional systems
any of seven circuits, proposed by Panksepp, common to all higher animals, that generate both emotional actions and specific autonomic changes that support those actions
dimensional theories of emotion
theories that describe emotions that are fundamentally the same but differ along one or more dimensions, such as valence (pleasant to unpleasant, positive to negative) and arousal (very intense to very mild)
emotions
an affective (positive or negative) mental response to a stimulus that is composed of a physiological response, a behavioural response, and a feeling
emotion generation
an unagreed-upon set of processes that may or may not combine an atomic bottom-up response with a top-down response, which involves memory and/or linguistic representations
emotion regulation
voluntary and involuntary processes deployed to manage and respond to emotions
Input: can consist of avoiding the stimulus altogether, changing the attention paid to it. Or reappraisal (altering the emotional impact of the stimulus)
Output: intensifying, diminishing, prolonging, or curtailing the emotional experience, expression, or physiological response
facial expression
the nonverbal communication of emotion by the manipulation of particular groups of facial muscles. research findings suggest that six basic human facial expressions represent the emotional states anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise
fear conditioning
learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires aversive properties by virtue of being paired with an aversive event
feeling
either the sensation of touch or the conscious sensation of an emotion
flow
the enjoyable state of being “in the zone”
insula
also insular cortex. a part of cortex hidden in the sylvian fissure. the insula also has extensive reciprocal connections with areas associated with emotion, such as the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate gyrus; as well as with frontal, parietal, and temporal cortical areas involved with attention, memory, and cognition
interoception
physical sensations arising from inside the body, such as pain, temperature, hunger,…
mood
a long-lasting diffuse affective state that is characterised primarily by a predominance of enduring subjective feelings without an identifiable object or trigger
reappraisal
a cognitive strategy to reassess an emotion
up regulation, down regulation
somatic marker
a physiological-emotional mechanism that was once theorised to help people sort through possible options and make a decision. somatic markers were thought to provide a common metric for evaluating options with respect to their potential benefit
stress
a fixed pattern of physiological and neurohormonal changes that occurs when we encounter a stimulus, event, or thought that threatens us in some way
suppression
intentionally excluding a thought or feeling from conscious awareness. a strategy for inhibiting an emotion-expressive behaviour during an emotionally arousing situation
defensive circuit p. 442
refers to the neural pathways that detect and respond to threats, triggering defensive behaviors and physiological reactions.
Key components:
Sensory Input: The amygdala receives sensory information (e.g., from sight, sound) via the basolateral complex.
Threat Assessment: The amygdala evaluates the threat and activates the ventromedial complex, which coordinates responses.
Output: Signals are sent to the brainstem, hypothalamus, and other regions to initiate:
Fight-or-flight responses (e.g., increased heart rate, freezing, or escape behaviors).
Emotional states like fear or anxiety.
defensive behaviour p. 442
Defensive behavior refers to actions and physiological responses triggered by a perceived threat to ensure survival. These behaviors are controlled by neural circuits involving the amygdala, hypothalamus, and brainstem, and can be categorized into two main types:
Active Defense: Actions like fleeing, fighting, or vocalizing to escape or deter a threat.
Passive Defense: Behaviors like freezing, hiding, or becoming immobile to avoid detection.
These responses are modulated by threat intensity and proximity, ensuring an appropriate reaction to potential danger.
korsakoff’s syndrome
Korsakoff’s Syndrome is a neurological disorder caused by severe thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency, often associated with chronic alcoholism.
Key Features:
Anterograde Amnesia: Inability to form new memories.
Retrograde Amnesia: Loss of older memories.
Confabulation: Fabricating stories to fill memory gaps.
Other Symptoms: Apathy, confusion, and poor coordination.
It results from damage to brain areas like the mammillary bodies and thalamus, crucial for memory processing. Early treatment with thiamine can prevent progression but often does not fully reverse the condition.
low road pathway
The low road pathway is a fast, automatic neural route for processing emotional stimuli, particularly threats.
Key Features:
Pathway: Sensory input → Thalamus → Amygdala (bypasses the cortex).
Function: Enables rapid, unconscious responses to potential danger before detailed analysis.
Example: Jumping at the sight of a snake-like object before realizing it’s a stick.
This pathway prioritizes survival by allowing quick reactions, while the high road pathway (via the cortex) provides slower, more accurate processing.
high road pathway
The high road pathway is a slower, more deliberate neural route for processing emotional stimuli.
Key Features:
Pathway: Sensory input → Thalamus → Sensory Cortex → Amygdala.
Function: Allows detailed analysis and conscious interpretation of stimuli.
Example: Realizing a snake-like object is just a stick after initial fear.
This pathway integrates context and experience, enabling a more accurate emotional response compared to the low road pathway.
biological motion
Biological motion refers to the perception of movement patterns created by living organisms, particularly humans and animals.
Key Features:
Recognizable Patterns: Observers can identify actions (e.g., walking, running) from minimal cues, like point-light displays (dots representing joints).
Neural Basis: The superior temporal sulcus (STS) and mirror neuron system play key roles in detecting and interpreting biological motion.
Significance: Vital for social interaction, understanding intentions, and recognizing emotions or threats from movements.
It highlights the brain’s ability to extract meaning from complex, dynamic visual stimuli.
mesial temporal sclerosis
Medial Temporal Sclerosis (MTS) is a neurological condition characterized by scarring and cell loss in the medial temporal lobe, often affecting the hippocampus.
Key Features:
Causes: Commonly associated with prolonged or recurrent seizures (e.g., temporal lobe epilepsy), trauma, or infection.
Symptoms:
Memory impairments (especially episodic memory).
Seizures that may include sensory or emotional auras.
Pathology: Atrophy and gliosis (scarring) in structures like the hippocampus and parahippocampus.
Treatment:
Medications: Antiepileptic drugs to manage seizures.
Surgery: In severe cases, removal of the affected area may reduce seizure activity.
MTS is a leading cause of intractable epilepsy.
instructed-fear paradigm
The instructed-fear paradigm is a psychological research method used to study fear responses without direct experience of a threat.
Key Features:
Setup: Participants are told (instructed) that a specific stimulus (e.g., a colored light or sound) predicts an aversive outcome (like a shock), even if they never actually experience it.
Response Measurement: Fear responses, such as increased heart rate, skin conductance, or amygdala activity, are measured when the stimulus is presented.
Significance:
Demonstrates that fear can arise from verbal information alone.
Helps distinguish learned fear through instruction vs. direct experience (classical conditioning).
amygdala’s role is modulatory p. 452
The amygdala’s role is modulatory in that it influences and regulates emotional responses and other brain functions rather than directly producing them.
Key Points:
Emotional Processing: The amygdala modulates emotional reactions like fear and anxiety by interacting with other brain regions (e.g., prefrontal cortex, hippocampus).
Memory Modulation: It enhances the encoding and retrieval of emotionally significant memories, particularly in response to stress or fear.
Adaptive Responses: The amygdala helps prioritize attention to emotionally relevant stimuli, guiding behavior based on emotional salience.
Social Behavior: It plays a role in processing facial expressions and social cues, modulating emotional responses to social situations.
Thus, the amygdala doesn’t solely “create” emotions but modulates them, ensuring responses are appropriate for the context.
novelty p. 455
often associated with the brain’s response to new or unexpected stimuli.
Key Points:
Attention: Novel stimuli capture attention more readily, activating brain regions like the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.
Reward and Motivation: Novelty is linked to dopamine release, which plays a role in reward processing and motivation.
Learning and Memory: Novel experiences are more likely to be encoded into memory, as they stand out from routine or familiar events.
Adaptive Function: It helps organisms detect changes in the environment, which can signal potential opportunities or threats.
Novelty plays a critical role in learning, memory, and behavioral flexibility.
two primary ways by which emotion influences decision making
- incidental affect
- integral emotion
incidental affect p. 457
current emotional state, unrelated to the decision at hand, incidentally influences the decision
integral emotion p. 457
emotions elicited by the choice options are incorporated into the decision. this process may include emotions that you anticipate feeling after you have made the decision, which humans are notoriously bad at predicting.
endowment effect
The endowment effect is a cognitive bias where people tend to value things they own more highly than equivalent items they do not own.
Key Points:
Ownership Influence: When individuals own an object, they assign it greater value, often leading to reluctance in trading or selling it, even if the market value is the same.
Emotional Attachment: This effect is driven by emotional attachment, where the object is seen as a part of the self.
Behavioral Impact: The endowment effect can influence decision-making, leading people to overvalue possessions in transactions or negotiations.
It is often studied in economics and psychology to understand irrational behaviors in consumer choices and negotiations.
devaluation task p. 458
A devaluation task is a behavioral experiment used to assess how changes in the value of a reward influence decision-making and behavior. It is commonly used in studies of learning and motivation, particularly in animal research.
Key Features:
Procedure: An animal or participant learns to perform a behavior to receive a specific reward (e.g., food). After the reward is devalued (e.g., by making it less desirable or by satiating them), researchers test whether the behavior persists or decreases.
Purpose: It helps investigate whether an organism’s actions are driven by the learned value of the reward or the motivation to obtain it.
Significance: The task provides insights into how incentive value affects behavior and how reinforcement learning can be influenced by changes in reward value.
It is useful for studying the mechanisms of motivation, decision-making, and learning in both humans and animals.
disgust
Insula: Key role in detecting/experiencing disgust (anterior insula particularly).
Meta-analyses:
Disgust reliably activates the anterior insula and IFG, distinguishing it from other emotions.
Left anterior insula more active in anger than disgust.
Herpes Encephalitis: Insula aids in using feelings in cognitive processes, not generating them.
MVPA Findings: Emotions are represented as discrete categories, not just along a valence continuum.
happiness
Sad vs. Happy: Both activate the amygdala–hippocampal area, parahippocampal gyrus, prefrontal/temporal cortex, ACC, and precuneus.
Happiness: Stronger activations in DLPFC, cingulate gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and cerebellum.
Pleasure Types:
Bodily pleasures (e.g., eating, sex).
Flow: Immersion in activities, forgetting everything else.
Happiness involves circuits for pleasure, reward, and motivation.
love
General: Love activates a distributed system involving dopamine-rich areas: insula, caudate, putamen, VTA, ACC, hippocampus, IFG, MTG, and parietal lobe. No amygdala activation in love (only in lust).
Passionate Love: Activates subcortical and higher-order brain areas (self-representation, attention, social cognition). Longer love = increased activation (right insula, ACC, posterior cingulate, IFG, putamen, MTG, parietal lobe).
Maternal Love: Overlaps with passionate love but adds PAG activation (linked to emotion systems with vasopressin receptors, vital for bonding).
cortical and subcortical structures involved in emotion processing
- sensory systems: external events/stimuli 2. memory systems: internal stimuli 3. Autonomic Nervous System: physiological components of emotions
- sympathetic and parasympathetic NS -> homeostasis
- hypothalamus -> regulation of ANS & release of multiple hormones through the HPA axis
arousal
critical for theories of emotion. the reticular activation system regulates the arousal system: neurons run from the brainstem to the cortex via the rostral intralaminar and thalamic nuclei.
intensity of the internal emotional response, high-low
limbic system
complex neural circuits involved in the processing of emotion
complex interconnected network for analysis of emotions
thalamus, somatosensory cortex, higher.order sensory cortices, amygdala, insular cortex, ventral striatum, medial prefrontal cortex including the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortexFor inspiration, see section 12.3: Make Inferences About the Association (ACC)
-> there is no single emotional circuit
multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA)
takes into account the relationships between multiple voxels (as opposed to the more common approach, which considers each voxel separately), used to predict emotional experiences within and across individuals
high-powered 7-tesla fMRI
more detail (PAG was too small for reliable localisation = activation in the PAG in^dentified from emotional stimuli)
optogenetic techniques
manipulate neuronal circuits to identify specific behaviours that result from activation of the circuits
three primary categories of emotions
- basic: a closed set of emotions, unique characteristics, carved by evolution and reflected through facial expressions
- complex: combinations of basic emotions, some of which may be socially or culturally learned, that can be identified as evolved, long-lasting feelings
- dimensional theories: emotions that are fundamentally the same but that differ along one or more dimensions, such as valence and arousal, in reaction to events or stimuli
valence
pleasant-unpleasant; positive-negative
affects (panksepp)
heuristics that the brain uses for making snap judgments about what will enhance or detract from survival
core emotional systems
seeking/desire system, rage/anger system, fear/anxiety system, lust/sex system, care/maternal nurturance system,
grief/separation distress system,
play/physical social engagement system
Ekman’s well-established basic emotions
anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise
complex emotions
differentiate from basic emotions by their extended duration from months to a lifetime. e.g., jealousy, romantic love
positive states
dopamine
negative states
norepinephrine
approach & withdrawal
used to characterise emotions by the actions and goals that they motivate
james-lange theory of emotion
- you see the bear
- conscious perception of stimulus
- physiological response: adrenaline, sweating,…
- behavioural response: you run
- cognition: realisation of physiological response
- subjective emotional feeling: you’re scared
cannon-bard theory of emotion
we simultaneously experience emotions and physiological responses: one does not cause the other.
1. see the bear
2. thalamus processes the emotional stimuli and sends this info simultaneously to the neocortex and the hypothalamus, which 3. produces the peripheral response 4. the neocortex generates the emotional feeling, while the periphery carries out the emotional reaction
appraisal theory of emotion
a group of theories in which the emotional processing depends on an interaction between the stimulus properties and their interpretations
emotion (lazarus)
response to the reckoning of the ration of harm versus benefit in a person’s encounter with something
cause of the emotion
both the stimulus and its significance
- cognitive appraisal comes before emotional response and it is automatic and unconscious
singer-schachter theory (cognitive interpretation of arousal)
- see the bear
- physiological response (arousal): heart racing, ready to run
- behavioural response: run
- cognition: i see bear, my heart is racing, i must be afraid
- emotional feeling: im scared
le doux’s fast and slow roads to emotion
two emotional systems operating in parallel.
1. the neural system for our emotional responses bypasses the cortex and is hardwired by evolution to produce fast responses that increase our chances of survival and reproduction
2. a system that includes cognition. slower and more accurate. this system generates the conscious feeling of emotion. conscious feelings are not hardwired but are learned by experience and are irrelevant to emotional responses
evolutionary psychology approach to emotion
emotions are constructors of cognitive programs that need to be coordinated to produce successful behaviour. emotions are an overarching program that directs the cognitive subprograms and their interactions.
- emotion is not reducible to its effects on physiology, behavioural inclinations, cognitive appraisals, or feeling state
- emotions involve instructions for other mechanisms distributed throughout the human mental and physical architecture
panksepp’s hierarchical processing theory of emotion
- see the bear
- subcortical processing
- core emotion
parallel processing: 1. instinctive emotional behavior is supported physiologically: he runs 2. emotional feeling: im scared
anderson and adolphs
emotional stimulus activates a CNS state that activates multiple systems producing separate responses: feelings, behaviours, psychological reactions, and cognitive changes
Klüver.Bucy syndrome
a lack of fear manifested by a tendency to approach objects that would normally elicit a fear response
the amygdala is the forebrain’s most connected structure
- plays a critical role in learning, memory, and attention in response to emotionally significant stimuli
- neurotransmitters: glutamate, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine
- hormone receptors: glucocorticoids and estrogen
- peptide receptors: opioids, oxytocin, vasopressin, corticotropin-releasing factor, and neuropeptide Y
ideas concerning what role the amygdala plays:
- protective device: detect and avoid danger
- involved in attention, perception, value representation, and decision-making
- active when the rest of the brain cannot easily predict what sensations mean. signals other parts of the brain to keep working until these issues have been figured out
amygdala and emotional processing
- play a role in the identification of facial expressions of fear
- experience the emotion of fear
- amygdala lesions cause no deficit in any emotion other than fear
- the inability to feel fear is also the inability to avoid dangerous situations. learning from past fearful experiences is not possible
appraisal tendency framework
specific affective states give rise to specific cognitive and motivational properties and thus yield certain action tendencies that depend on arousal level and the valence of the mood, but they may differ for different moods of the same valence
acute stress
leads to an increased reliance on default or habitual responses. it enhances performance on tasks that rely on the striatum (choices based on habits)
-> acute stress leads to a shift from goal-directed to habitual choices in humans
anthropomorphization
perceiving and interpreting emotion and sociability in a wide range of stimuli, even inanimate objects
emotional prosody
various non-verbal aspects of the language people use to understand or convey emotions
insular lesions
both reduced arousal (to both unpleasant and pleasant stimuli) and reduced valence ratings
amygdala lesions
decreased arousal for unpleasant stimuli had the same positive and negative valence ratings an the control-lesion group
