Emotion

Question 1

Decorticate

Answer 1

Cortex removed

Question 2

What did Cannon & Bard (1920s) find about animals that were decorticate but had intact diencephalon and most critically hypothalamus?

Answer 2

They exhibited sham rage

Question 3

What is sham rage?

Answer 3

Rage without the conscious experience of it.

Question 4

What is the Papez Circuit?

Answer 4

Papez (1937) came up with the incorrect idea that subcortical events can influence cortical activity and vice versa with the cingulate gyrus as the seat of conscious emotion.

the circuit:
Anterior Thalamic Nuclei -> Cingulate gyrus -> Hippocampus -> Hypothalamus (mammillary bodies)

The mammillary bodies are actually part of the hippocampus, I think

Question 5

What is psychic blindness?

Answer 5

Visual agnosia as a result of temporal damage. The animal can grab things but not recognize them

Question 6

What did Kluver & Bucy (1930s) add?

Answer 6

They shoed that amygdalectomy produced the syndrome by their name and it includes tameness, increased and undiscriminating sexual activity (to the wrong species even), strong oral tendencies.

It seems like the extent of damage to the bilateral amygdala in the syndrome is not clear.

Question 7

What did MacLean (1949) add?

Answer 7

He advanced the Papez circuit and called it the limbic system which contained the limbic cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala, and related areas and nuclei.

Question 8

What has happened to the idea of the limbic system since MacLean?

Answer 8

It’s shrunk and isn’t as big.

Question 9

What does the amygdala consist of ?

Answer 9

nuclei buried in the anterior pole of the temporal lobe. Maybe anterior to the hippocampus.

Question 10

What is the amygdala linked to?

Answer 10

There are strong pathways to the medioventral parts of the temporal lobe and to the orbitofronal and medial frontal cortex.

It also links subcortically to the hypothalamus

Question 11

What type of processes is the amygdala involved in?

Answer 11

Drive processes in that those processes are related to emotion.
Also known as:
Viscero-Homeostatic processes

Question 12

How are rage and thirst similar?

Answer 12

They both use Viscero-Homeostatic drive processes. We call rage an emotion because of its social component but both involve internal hormone and blood/oxygen stabilization processes and when they can’t be stabilized, people are driven to action.

Question 13

The limbic system involves what three things?

Answer 13

Reflexes, drive states, emotions

Question 14

What happens after information moves through the amygdala?

Answer 14

It gets link to a network of brain regions critical for emotion-related processes including conditioned fear and voluntary avoidance of aversive outcomes (escape)

These routes include stress hormone release, parasympathetic control, emotional behavior (freezing, wincing), sympathetic activation (increase of arterial blood pressure), and cortical arousal and attention

Question 15

What is the Stress Hormone Release Route?

Answer 15

Central Amygdala -> BNST -> Para-ventricular -> Anterior Pituitary

Question 16

BNST

Answer 16

Bed nucleus of the vagus

Question 17

What is the parasympathetic control route?

Answer 17

Central Amygdala -> Parabrachial -> DMV NA

Question 18

DMV

Answer 18

Dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus

Question 19

NA

Answer 19

nucleus ambiguus

Question 20

What is the emotional behavior route?

Answer 20

Central Amygdala -> Central Gray

Question 21

What is the sympathetic activation route?

Answer 21

Central Amygdala -> Lateral Hypothalamus -> RVL Medulla

Question 22

RVL medulla

Answer 22

Rostral ventrolateral nuclei of the medulla

Question 23

What is the cortical arousal and attention route?

Answer 23

Central Amygdala -> Nucleus Basailis

This route includes a feedback route to Primary Sensory Cortex

Question 24

What is the path to the amygdala?

Answer 24

Emotional stimulus such as tone that predicts a shock -> Sensory Thalamus -> Primary Sensory Cortex, Unimodal Association Cortex, and Polymodal Association (Motor Cortex and Operant Behavior like escape)

All of the above areas also feed to and feedback from the Lateral Amygdala

From Polymodal Association -> Entorhinal cortex -> Hippocampus -> subiculum (Feeds back to entorhinal cortex and forward to lateral amygdala

Question 25

What is the pathway within the amygdala?

Answer 25

Lateral amygdala -> Baso-lateral or baso-medial amygdala -> Central amygdala

Question 26

What do lesions of the lateral amygdala and hypothalamus reveal?

Answer 26

The hypothalamus is involved in arterial pressure (autonomic) as when lesioned the magnitude was reduced during conditioned responses, but freezing was not reduced unless the Central Grey (Caudal) amygdala was lesioned.

Question 27

How do they know that condition and declarative knowledge are double disassociated?

Answer 27

Humans with damage to the lateral amygdala or hippocampus were conditioned to a loud boat horn being paired with a monochrome slide or tone and galvanic skin (sweat) response was measured. Those with amygdala damage weren’t conditioned but knew what the tone meant. Those with hippocampus damage were but didn’t know why.

Both groups showed a response to the actual noise when it was presented, so it was unpleasant for both.

This shows that in bilateral damage to the amygdala, fear is blunted.

Question 28

Does lack of fear conditioning mean amygdala damage results in lack of fear? Discuss case study

Answer 28

No, but a case study shows that this kind of damage will result in curiosity in the face of danger and can lead to seeking out dangerous curiosities (like tarantulas) despite knowing they can harm them. It can also result in no concept of personal space.

However, fear will show up (increase) if you make them feel they are suffocating.

Fear isn’t totally gone, just very blunted.

Question 29

What types of feelings are associated with stimulation to the amygdala?

Answer 29

teeth pain, ear pain, floating, vision, warm, breathless, Nirvana, powerless, unpleasant, mental diplopia, lazy, relaxed

ranges from agony to bliss

Question 30

What can temporal lobe epilepsy reveal?

Answer 30

Epilepsy near the amygdala sometimes results in religious excitation. When not having a seizure, temporal lobe interictal syndrome may result in increased religiosity due to increased activity in the area.

Question 31

What are major characteristics of temporal lobe epilepsy interictal syndrome

Answer 31

Hypergraphia, religiosity, obsessionality, guilt, sadness, paranoia, philosophical, viscosity (viciousness), dependence

Question 32

How did they measure TLE interictal syndrome?

Answer 32

On the Bear-Fedio scale, epileptic patients with and without hyperreligiosity were compared. The religious group had the other trains, like hypergraphia, etc

Question 33

Hypergraphia

Answer 33

Extensive and sometimes compulsive writing and drawing, often revealing a heightened sense of meaning in the details of life, and part of the TLE interictal syndrome.

It’s not necessarily good writing. It could be lists.

Question 34

What is true about gustatory, olfactory, and visual modality preferences?

Answer 34

One cell can respond to a preference in all three. Seeing a banana, smelling it, and eating it excites the same cell, but it doesn’t excite for apples.

Question 35

What is true about orbitofrontal neurons responding to smell, taste, and vision?

Answer 35

They respond based on value. If the banana is valued, they respond. If they overeat and don’t want bananas, they don’t respond, if they want bananas more than raisins but raisins more than apples, they fire for raisins when the choice is between them and apples and for bananas when they are added in.

The exact study showing the second bit of this involved showing the monkey what it could get and watching anticipation when it saw what a specific trial would yield.

Question 36

What happens in humans when orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are damaged?

Answer 36

Disexecutive syndrome (difficulty making decisions)

Question 37

What is the Wisconsin Card Sorting task?

Answer 37

A number of stimulus cards are presented to the participant. The participant is told to match the cards, but not how to match; however, he or she is told whether a particular match is right or wrong.

I think the rules sometimes change without the participant knowing and they have to adapt.

Question 38

Explain Bechara’s study and its impact on understanding orbital and medial prefrontal damage?

Answer 38

Participants have four stacks.
A = +100 or -250 with 5/10 odds
B = +100 or -1250 with 1/10 odds
C = +50 or -50 with 5/10 odds
D = +50 or -250 with 1/10 odds

Most people realize C and D are better after a while, but people with prefrontal damage continue drawing from the A and B piles even though they net -25 while C and D net +25.

The question is if its because of perseveration or value of anticipation/outcomes.

Question 39

Is the result of the card task due to perseveration or value anticipation?

Answer 39

Galvanic skin responses show that orbital and medial prefrontal lesioned patients did not have as much of a response to anticipation of the reward/punishment as controls did. They did however have a reaction to the actual punishment.

This points to value anticipation over perseveartion.