Emotion 3 Flashcards
Appraisal theories of emotion
Focus on the subjective experience of emotion.
Primary appraisal: judging situation as positive/negative (valence).
Secondary appraisal: analysis of own coping resources.
Two factor theories of emotion
Combine James’ ideas with appraisal theories.
1. Perception of bodily arousal -> intensity of emotion
2. Cognitive appraisal of situation -> type of emotion
Unexplained and unexpected arousal will be explained by situational cues.
Schachter & Singer’s two factor theory
Stimulus -> body response + appraisal -> feeling
Role of hippocampus in emotion
Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy experience intense emotions, especially when damage around hippocampus.
Amydala and emotion
Involved in learning and representing the emotional value and salience and relevance of stimuli.
Key role in inducing bodily changes.
Hypothalamus and emotion
Maintaining homeostasis.
Master endocrine gland which regulates hormone release.
Regulates autonomic activity and basic survival related behaviours.
Role in innate fear.
Periaqueductal gray and emotion
Propagation en modulation of pain.
Autonomic and defensive and aversive responses.
Ventral Striatum and emotion
NAc and ventral pallidum.
Mesolimbic dopaminergic projection from VTA in the
midbrain to NAc.
Operant conditioning.
Responds to rewards and anticipation of rewards.
Liking vs wanting
Mesolimbic stimulation triggers desire but not pleasure.
Patients decribe feeling that is not pleasant but still have sexual desire, thirst but without satisfaction.
Dopamine controls wanting, not liking.
Insula and emotion
Anterior insula involved in interoceptive awareness, pain, and bodily feelings.
Receives visceral inputs.
Contains gustatory cortex.
Orbitofrontal cortex and emotion
Represents motivational value of rewards.
Changes value of rewards according to context.
Key role for Damasio’s secondary emotions.
Anterior Cingulate Cortex and emotion
Production of bodily responses.
Response monitoring, pain in dorsal region.
Mentalizing areas in ventral region.
Panksepp’s experiments with rats
He used electrical brain stimulation to map discret emotion systems.
He found two types of aggression in when stimulating rats hypothalmus with different currents, predatory aggression and affective aggression.
The rats engage in self stimulation which results in predatory aggression but not affective.
Panksepp’s neurobiological systems theory
When stimulated, it provokes an identifiable behavioural sequence that the animal can indicate it likes or dislikes.
Single emotional systems are not mapped onto individual brain areas in a 1-to-1 fashion but overlapping networks subserve distincs basic emotion systems.
Subcortical regions are primary for emotion and require less stimulation to elicit emotional response.
Critique on Panksepp’s theory
Results of electrical brain stimulation can be highly variable within the same animal and between animals.
Replications of his work are difficult to find.
Applicability to human experience of emotion.
