EMOTION

Question 1

Emotion

Answer 1

– Subjective, conscious experience.
– Brief response to internal or external event.
– Facial expressions, biological reactions, mental states.
– Linked to arousal of nervous system.

Question 2

Feelings

Answer 2

subjective representation of emotion

Question 3

Moods

Answer 3

diffuse state; longer & less intense than emotions

Question 4

Affect

Answer 4

broad term for emotion/feelings/moods

“affective neuroscience”

Question 5

Basic Emotions: Darwin

Answer 5

Darwin (1859) proposed limited number of basic, universal human emotions.

Question 6

Basic Emotions: Ekman

Answer 6

Ekman (1971):
evidence for 6 basic emotional expressions
• Anger
• Disgust
• Fear
• Happiness
• Sadness
• Surprise

Anger + disgust = contempt

• These emotions are Universal;
how we convey these emotions through facial expression does not vary from culture to culture.

Question 7

Dimensions of Emotion

Answer 7

Multidimensional scaling approach to classifying emotions

– Dimension 1 = valence (how negative or positive)
– Dimension 2 = arousal (intensity of reaction)

Question 8

valence

Answer 8

how negative or positive

Question 9

arousal

Answer 9

intensity of reaction

Question 10

Measuring

Emotion

Answer 10

– Directly
• self-report
• direct assessment:
participants explicitly report their emotional
reaction, mood, or attitude.
• Drawbacks: Personal misinterpretation, lying

–Indirectly
• Indirect assessment: “Which do you like
more?” (happy face vs. sad face) – assumes emotion influences choice
• Inhibition or facilitation of a behavior (e.g., RT or eye movements)
• Psychophysiology: relationship between mental states and physiological responses
…..E.g., skin conductance response (autonomic nervous system arousal)

Question 11

Directly Measuring

Emotion

Answer 11

• self-report
• direct assessment:
participants explicitly report their emotional
reaction, mood, or attitude.
• Drawbacks: Personal misinterpretation, lying

Question 12

Indirectly Measuring

Emotion

Answer 12

• Indirect assessment: “Which do you like
more?” (happy face vs. sad face) – assumes emotion influences choice
• Inhibition or facilitation of a behavior (e.g., RT or eye movements)
• Psychophysiology: relationship between mental states and physiological responses
…..E.g., skin conductance response (autonomic nervous system arousal)

Question 13

Manipulating

Emotion

Answer 13

• Mood induction: changing the baseline state reported by the participants via some procedure
– Show the participant affective film clips
– Play music
– Ask the participant to focus on affective situations, real or imagined

• Successful if the participant reports a shift of mood in the predicted direction.
• Use surveys to assess mood
• Emotionally evocative stimuli

Question 14

Posner

cuing

Answer 14

The Posner Cueing Task (a.k.a, the Posner paradigm) is a neuropsychological test used to assess attention. Formulated by Michael Posner, the task assesses an individual’s ability to perform an attentional shift. It has been used and modified to assess disorders, focal brain injury, and the effects of both on spatial attention.

• Spatial Cue can be valid or invalid (location of target)
• Cue is face instead of plain location cue
• When invalid & emotional, Reaction Time is slower than invalid & neutral
• Emotion holds attention (takes longer to disengage)

Method
Posner’s spatial cueing task has been used to measure manual and eye-movement reaction times to target stimuli in order to investigate the effects of covert orienting of attention in response to different cue conditions.

In the general paradigm, observers are seated in front of a computer screen situated at eye level. They are instructed to fixate at a central point on the screen, marked by a dot or cross. To the left and the right of the point are 2 boxes. For a brief period, a cue is presented on the screen. Following a brief interval after the cue is removed, a target stimulus, usually a shape, appears in either the left or right box. The observer must respond to the target immediately after detecting it. To measure reaction time (RT), a response mechanism is placed in front of the observer, usually a computer keyboard which is pressed upon detection of a target. Following a set inter-trial interval, lasting usually between 2500 and 5000 ms, the entire paradigm is repeated for a set number of trials predetermined by the experimenter. This experimental paradigm appears to be very effective in recasting attentional allocation.

Endogenous and exogenous cues in the Posner Paradigm.
Cues

2 major cue types are used to analyze attention based on the type of visual input. An endogenous cue is presented in the center of the screen, usually at the same location as the center of focus. It is an arrow or other directional cue pointing to the left or right box on the screen. This cue relies on input from the central visual field. An exogenous cue is presented outside of the center of focus, usually highlighting the left or right box presented on the screen. An exogenous cue can also be an object or image in the periphery, a number of degrees away from the center, but still within the visual angle. This cue relies on visual input from the peripheral visual field.

Valid and Invalid Trials
Posner devised a scheme of using valid and invalid cues across trials. In valid trials, the stimulus is presented in the area as indicated by the cue. For example, if the cue was an arrow pointing to the right, the subsequent stimulus indeed did appear in the box on the right. Conversely, in invalid trials, the stimulus is presented on the side opposite to that indicated by the cue. In this case, the arrow pointed to the right (directing attention to the right), but the stimulus in fact appeared in the box on the left. Posner used a ratio of 80% valid trials and 20% invalid trials in his original studies. The observer learns that usually the cue is valid, reinforcing the tendency to direct attention to the cued side. Some trials do not present cues prior to presenting the target. These are considered neutral trials. Some tasks use neutral trials that do present cues. These neutral cues give the participant an idea as to when the target will appear, but do not give any indication of which side it is likely to appear on. For example, a neutral cue could be a double-sided arrow. The comparison of performance on neutral, invalid, and valid trials allows for the analysis of whether cues direct attention to a particular area and benefit or hinder attentional performance. Since the participant is not allowed to move their eyes in response to the cue, but remain fixated on the center of the screen, differences in reaction time between target stimuli preceded by these 3 cue conditions indicates that covert orienting of attention has been employed.

Question 15

EmoNonal
stroop
task

Answer 15

– Name color of words (like regular stroop)
– Takes longer for emotional words (need to disengage)
– {DEMO}
– Does it correlate with emotional states/traits?

The emotional Stroop task is used as an information-processing approach to assessing emotions. Related to the standard Stroop effect, the emotional Stroop test works by examining the response time of the participant to name colors of negative emotional words. For example, depressed participants will be slower to say the color of depressing words rather than non-depressing words. Non-clinical subjects have also been shown to name the color of an emotional word (e.g., “war”, “cancer”, “kill”) slower than naming the color of a neutral word (e.g., “clock”, “lift”, “windy”).

While the emotional Stroop test and the classic Stroop effect elicit similar behavioral outcomes (a slowing in response times to colored words), these tests engage different mechanisms of interference. The classic Stroop test creates a conflict between an incongruent color and word (the word “RED” in the font color blue) but the emotional Stroop involves only emotional and neutral words—color does not affect slowing because it does not conflict with word meaning. In other words, studies show the same effects of slowing for emotional words relative to neutral even if all the words are black. Thus, the emotional Stroop does not involve an effect of conflict between a word meaning and a color of text, but rather appears to capture attention and slow response time due to the emotional relevance of the word for the individual. The emotional Stroop test has been used broadly in clinical studies using emotional words related to a particular individual’s area of concern, such as alcohol-related words for someone who is alcoholic, or words involving a particular phobia for someone with anxiety or phobic disorders. Both the classic and the emotional Stroop tests, however, involve the need to suppress responses to distracting word information, while selectively maintaining attention on the color of the word to complete the task.

Question 16

“Attentional
Rubbernecking”
/
”Emotion-induced Blindness”

Answer 16

– See sequence of pictures, detect sideways target

– Emotional distractor captures attention
»> subject misses target.

Emotional stimuli often attract attention, but at what cost to the processing of other stimuli? Given the potential costs, to what degree can people override emotion-based attentional biases? In Experiment 1, participants searched for a single target within a rapid serial visual presentation of pictures; an irrelevant, emotionally negative or neutral picture preceded the target by either 2 or 8 items. At the shorter lag, negative pictures spontaneously induced greater deficits in target processing than neutral pictures did. Thus, attentional biases to emotional information induced a temporary inability to process stimuli that people actively sought. Experiment 2 revealed that participants could reduce this effect through attentional strategy, but that the extent of this reduction was related to their level of the personality trait harm avoidance. Participants lower in harm avoidance were able to reduce emotion-induced blindness under conditions designed to facilitate the ignoring of the emotional stimuli. Those higher in harm avoidance were unable to do so.

Question 17

Emotionally-Salient are

events remembered more vividly

Answer 17

– Where were you on 9/11?
– “Flashbulb memory”
– Interaction between amygdala & hippocampus

Question 18

Flashbulb Memory

Answer 18

A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid ‘snapshot’ of the moment and circumstances in which a piece of surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) news was heard. The term “Flashbulb memory” suggests the surprise, indiscriminate illumination, detail, and brevity of a photograph; however flashbulb memories are only somewhat indiscriminate and are far from complete. Evidence has shown that although people are highly confident in their memories, the details of the memories can be forgotten.

Flashbulb memories are one type of autobiographical memory. Some researchers believe that there is reason to distinguish flashbulb memories from other types of autobiographical memory because they rely on elements of personal importance, consequentiality, emotion, and surprise. Others believe that ordinary memories can also be accurate and long lasting if they are highly distinctive, personally significant, or repeatedly rehearsed.

Flashbulb memories have 6 characteristic features: place, ongoing activity, informant, own affect, other affect, and aftermath. Arguably, the principal determinants of a flashbulb memory are a high level of surprise, a high level of consequentiality, and perhaps emotional arousal.

Question 19

Where is the Amygdala located?

Answer 19

medial temporal lobe

Limbic system.

Question 20

Amygdala

Answer 20

– Small almond-shaped structure in medial temporal lobe.
– Limbic system

• Vast
majority
of
studies
seem
to
focus
on
the
amygdala
• Kluver
&
Bucy
(1939):
“Psychic
blindness”
-­‐ Monkeys
with
amygdala
damage
showed
no
fear
• What
about
amygdala
damage
in
humans?

Question 21

Limbic system

Answer 21

• Emotional responses recruit a network of brain structures (Papez Circuit, or Limbic System)
• Hypothalamus, anterior thalamus, cingulate gyrus, hippocampus
• later included amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and basal ganglia

Limbic = “rim,” (around the corpus callosum)

Question 22

Problems with a Limbic “Circuit”

Answer 22

• Not all brain regions in the circuit respond to all emotions
(it is not unitary)
• Emotional processing has been found outside the system
• Nonemotional processing
found inside the system

Question 23

Monkeys with Amygdala Damage

Answer 23

Kluver
&
Bucy
(1939):
“Psychic
blindness”
-­‐ Monkeys
with
amygdala
damage
showed
no fear

Question 24

Amygdala Damage in Humans

Answer 24

Patient S.M.
– 20yrs old
– Bilateral atrophy of amygdala
– Degenerative genetic disorder
– Normal at just about every cognitive task
– Abnormal identification of certain facial expressions

• Test: judge the emotions being expressed in photographs of faces
• S.M.: trouble identifying fearful emotion
• Also had trouble drawing pictures depicting fearful
expression
(initially drew nothing, then drew a baby)

Question 25

Amygdala & Fear

Answer 25

Why such a selective deficit for fear?

– Fear is in the eyes
• S.M. didn’t initially direct
attention to eyes. When instructed to attend to the eyes, S.M. did better

– Amygdala response modulated by eye whites

Question 26

Amygdala & Fear:

fMRI

Answer 26

fMRI in controls:
Amygdala activates to fearful faces, even subliminally presented fearful faces.

Masked fearful > Masked happy

Question 27

Damage to Amygdala

Answer 27

– eliminates conditioned fear response
– but not unconditioned fear response

Amygdala lesions block fear learning

Question 28

Fear Learning in Humans

Answer 28

– Implicit learning (fear conditioning)
• Impaired in patients with amygdala damage
Measured physiologically with skin conductance response

– Explicit learning (instructed)
• Intact in patients with amygdala damage
• Patient S.P. knew the shock was associated w/ blue square, but didn’t exhibit fear response

Question 29

Patients with Hippocampal Damage

Answer 29

• Implicit fear learning intact but explicit learning impaired
• Showed normal skin conductance fear response but weren’t aware of association between shock & blue square

Question 30

2 pathways to amygdala

Answer 30

– “low road” = subcortical,
fast but crude

– “high road” = cortical, slower but more thorough

Question 31

Amygdala
&
Stereotyping

Answer 31

• What is the value of stereotyping?
– Ecological/historical?
same=friend,
different=enemy

• Do we do it consciously?
• What are the neural underpinnings?

Question 32

Implicit Association Task (IAT)

Answer 32

–Behavioral test
– https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
– Measures degree to which
social groups (e.g., black vs white, old vs young) are automatically associated with positive vs negative evaluations
– Pair responses to different groups & positive/negative
words
• Do you implicitly associate
certain groups with more positive or negative emotions?
• Bias = RT [black/good, white/bad] – RT [black/bad, white/good]

Question 33

Neural Underpinnings of Stereotyping

Answer 33

– Amygdala activated when white subjects viewed unfamiliar black vs white faces
– Correlated with individual’s
IAT bias
– Eliminated with increase in viewing time (cognitive control?), or familiar black faces

Question 34

perception of anger

Answer 34

Orbitofrontal cortex

ACC, Right OFC

Question 35

Disgust

Answer 35

= insula
– Viewing expressions of disgust in others
– Experiencing disgust
(e.g., unpleasant odor)

Question 36

Sadness

Answer 36

Amygdala, Right Temporal Pole

Functional Role: Withdraw

Question 37

Brain regions for other emotions

Answer 37

• Wrong way of thinking about it?

• Not separate brain regions for separate emotions, but:
– Different patterns of activation?
– Different patterns of connectivity between brain regions?
i.e., Amygdala, PFC, ACC, orbitofrontal, insula, hippocampus