Emotion

Question 1

What is an emotion?

Answer 1

subjective mental state that is usually accompanied by behaviors and physiological changes

Question 2

What did Darwin think about emotions?

Answer 2

-behaviors that are homologous to emotions are observed in many species
-facial expressions and postures send signals to approach or avoid
(Dog example)
-behaviors evolved and USED FOR COMMUNICATION

Question 3

Paul Ekman

Answer 3

A psychologist who went around the world and studied people of different cultures and their facial expressions

Question 4

Ekman’s results

Answer 4

• there was a lot of agreement on what happy looked like
• the more isolated the cultures he studied were, the less agreement they had about the basic facial expressions
• this suggests there could be a biological component to emotion

Question 5

What happens in the fear conditioning mice experiment?

Answer 5

They take a mouse from their “home” and put it in a new place. Then they make this sound and they will get the sound immediately before getting a shock. This happens a couple times and then the mouse goes home.

Question 6

What are the two ways in which you can tell the mouse learned something from fear conditioning

Answer 6

Context conditioning and que conditioning

Question 7

context conditioning

Answer 7

return the mouse to where fear conditioning occurred and you’ll see an increase in blood pressure and corticosterone
- and you’ll see and increase in freezing behavior
(don’t need the sound)

Question 8

Que conditioning

Answer 8

• This happens in the home cage

- play tone in home cage and you will get an increase in BP, corticosterone, and freezing behavior

Question 9

Amygdala is more important for…

Answer 9

short term responses

- still needed for fear memory

Question 10

Hippocampus is more important for…

Answer 10

long term responses

Question 11

What does the medial central nucleus (amygdala) control?

Answer 11

physiological responses to threats

Question 12

What is the lateral central nucleus (amygdala) important for?

Answer 12

more important for fear learning, probably through connections to hippocampus

Question 13

Activity is altered when an ion channel is exposed to…

Answer 13

a specific wave length of light

-can be either inhibitory (halorhodopsin) or excitatory (channelrhodopsin)

Question 14

If you are activating a channelrhodopsin you are…

Answer 14

depolarizing the cell

Question 15

If you are activating a halorhodopsin you are…

Answer 15

hyperpolarizing the cell, making it harder to for them to fire neurons

Question 16

Optogenetics

Answer 16

most common use of viral vectors is to induce expression of light-sensitive ion channels into neurons

Question 17

What are the light-sensitive channels in optogenetics?

Answer 17

They allow the activity of the neuron to be controlled with a fiber-optic cable

Question 18

What is channelrodpsin?

Answer 18

A genetically modified ion channel that becomes activated by blue lights
- when it is activated it allows sodium inflow (depolarization of the neuron) which makes it more active

Question 19

Channelrodopsin allows you to…

Answer 19

control the activity of the neuron

Question 20

What happens when you put blue light into the CEM?

Answer 20

neurons with ChR are depolarized

- freezing behavior increases when blue light is on

Question 21

What is the control in the CEM with light experiment?

Answer 21

Mice who get the blue light but don’t have ChR so they don’t freeze

Question 22

Why do you have to use virus in the CEM w/ light experiment?

Answer 22

In order to express ChR in CEM

Question 23

What does a GABA agonist do to the neural activity?

Answer 23

It inhibits neural activity

Question 24

What happens when muscimol is infused into CEL ?

Answer 24

It did NOT reduce freezing behaviors when measured before shock exposure

Question 25

In temporary inactivation what do we us muscimol for?

Answer 25

We use it to inactivate the CEL BEFORE conditioning and then we do the cue exposer a day later

Question 26

What is the temporary Inactivation experiment studying?

Answer 26

Whether you need the CEL to learn a fear memory and to detect a que

Question 27

CEL doesn’t promote _______ on its own

Answer 27

freezing

Question 28

CEL is necessary for __________

Answer 28

forming a fear memory

Question 29

What is muscimol?

Answer 29

It is a GABA agonist and we use it to inactivate different parts of the brain

Question 30

What is the difference between CEM

Answer 30

CEM- more important for the fear freezing response and less important for remembering
CEL- more important for learning less important for fear freezing

Question 31

What does methylation do to DNA?

Answer 31

It decreases its expression

Question 32

Where does DNA methylation occur?

Answer 32

In the hippocampus which contributes to the fear memory

Question 33

What are they doing in the DNMT experiment

Answer 33

They do the fear conditioning experiment, and then one group gets injected with DNMT right after and another group gets injected 6 hours later

Question 34

What were the results of the DNMT experiment?

Answer 34

The mice that got to injection right away didn’t have freezing behaviors and the ones that got injected later did

Question 35

What part of the brain is used for forgetting a memory?

Answer 35

frontal cortex

Question 36

What does a frontal cortex lesion do?

Answer 36

It kills off neurons by over exciting them

Question 37

What happens in the extinction

Answer 37

The mice get the tone without the shock

- eventually they forget because they aren’t getting the shock

Question 38

What is the conclusion for the extinction experiment?

Answer 38

Lesions in the frontal cortex make it harder to unlearn a fear memory