Emotion Flashcards

1
Q

What is emotion?

A
  • A feeling that is experience

- Personal for every person

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2
Q

Manifestation of emotions

A
  • Other people can tell how you feel by your facial expressions
  • Important to differentiate between the manifestation of emotion and the experience of your feelings/emotion
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3
Q

Describe how anxiety-like behaviour following long-term opioid abstinence can occur

A
  • The maze the mice were put in had a cross like structure - partly covered and partly uncovered.
  • The mouse prefers to be covered rather than exposed.
  • Results: Morphine withdrawn animals spent significantly less time and entries in the open arms compared to saline withdrawn animals.
  • This shows that prolonged withdrawal from morphine induces anxiety-like behaviour
  • Consistent in humans
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4
Q

What are the two theories which define emotion?

A

James Lange
- We experience emotions in response to physiological changes in our body

Cannon Bard

  • We can experience emotions independently of emotional expression
  • Emotions are produced when signals reach the thalamus either directly from sensory receptors or by descending cortical input
  • No correlation with physiological state
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5
Q

Brain systems responsible for emotion

A
  • Broca’s Limbic Lobe
    • > Primitive cortical gyri that form a ring around the brain stem
    • > Includes: the parahippocampal gyrus, the cingulate gyrus, the subcallosal gyrus
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6
Q

Where is the limbic system and what is its function?

A

Areas of the brain forming a ring around corpus callosum: cingulate gyrus, medial surface temporal lobe, hippocampus. The limbic system allows animals to experience and express emotions beyond the stereotyped brain stem behaviours.

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7
Q

What is the Papez circuit?

A

According to Papez, the emotional colouring occurs in the neocortex.

  1. Sends signals to the cingulate cortex
  2. Signals passed via the hippocampus to the hypothalamus where expression of emotion takes place
  3. There will be activation of the ANS and endocrine system
  4. Hypothalamus will send signals to the cingulate cortex via the anterior nuclei of the thalamus. Experience of emotion will take place.
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8
Q

Which emotion theory is the papez circuit compatible with?

A

Both theories

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9
Q

Function of the cingulate cortex

A

Critical for emotional experience

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10
Q

Function of the hippocampus

A

Governs behavioural expression of emotion e.g. if an individual has rabies it affects the hippocampus and they become hyperemotional

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11
Q

Function of the anterior thalamus

A

Responsible for relaying the information from the hypothalamus to the cingulate cortex

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12
Q

Lesions of the anterior thalamus

A

Leads to spontaneous laughing or crying

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13
Q

Regions of the limbic system

A
  • Cingulate gyrus
  • Parahippocampal structures
  • Septal nuclei
  • Amygdala
  • Enthorinal cortex
  • Hippocampal complex
    • > Dentate gyrus
    • > CA1-CA4 subfields
    • > subiculum
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14
Q

Function of the limbic system

A

The limbic system appears to have a role in attaching a behavioural significance and response to a stimulus, especially with respect to its emotional content.

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15
Q

Damage to the limbic system

A

Leads to profound effects on the emotional responsiveness of the animal

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16
Q

Function of areas of the limbic system

A

Cingulate gyrus

  • Role in complex motor control
  • Pain perception
  • Social interactions - mood

Hippocampus proper and parahippocampal areas
- Primary function in memory

Amygdala
- Learning and storage of emotional aspects of experience

17
Q

Difficulties with the single emotion system concept

A
  • Diversity of emotions and brain activity
  • Many structures involved in emotion
    • > No one-to-one relationship between structure and function
  • Limbic system: use of single, discrete emotion system questionable
18
Q

Emotion theories and neural representations

A
  • Early theories of emotion and the limbic system where built on introspection and inference from brain injury and disease
  • Studies of disease and consequences of lesions are not ideal for revealing normal function
  • Studies have shown that different areas in the brain are associated with different emotions
  • More recent theories of emotion
    • > Basic emotion theories
    • > Dimension emotion theories
19
Q

Amygdala

A
  • Critical structure for emotion in particular: fear and aggression, anxiety
  • Found in the sagittal section of the brain
  • Close to the hippocampus
  • Right and Left Amygdala
  • There are many subunclei: corticomedial nuclei, central nucleus and basolateral nuclei
20
Q

Where does the amygdala receive information from?

A
  • From the neocortex which includes the hippocampal and cingulate gyri lobe
  • Basolateral nuclei which receives information from all sensory systems such as the corticomedial nuclei and the central nuclei
21
Q

Where does the amygdala send output information to?

A
  • Hypothalamus which is the region in the brain involved in expression of emotion
  • Stria terminalis and ventral amygdalofugal pathway
22
Q

Rhesus monkeys experiement

A
  • Removal of the temporal lobe meant the animals had:
    • > Psychic blindness meaning the animals were able to see objects but not identify what they are
    • > Oral tendencies meaning to identify the objects in their mouth
    • > Emotional changes: animals have reduced fear
    • > Altered sexual behaviour - had hyperarousal
23
Q

Amygdalectomy

A

Removal of the amygdala

  • Reduce fear
  • Reduce aggression
  • Reduce ability to recognise a fearful expression (can recognise happiness)
  • Flattened emotions
24
Q

Electrical stimulation to the amygdala

A
  • Increased vigilance
  • Anxiety
  • Fear
  • Aggression
25
Q

Which disorder is the amygdala activated in?

A

It is activated in those with post-traumatic stress disorder - involvement in giving emotional content to memories (fear conditioning).

26
Q

Multi-facetted behaviour

A

Kill for freedom, murderer, power, dominance

27
Q

Endocrine mechanism for aggression

A

Testosterone and Castration

28
Q

What are the two types of brain mechanisms?

A
  1. Predatory aggression
    - Attacks made against a member of a different species, to obtain food
    - No sympathetic activity
  2. Affective aggression
    - For show, threatening posture/shows aggression but doesn’t actually act on it
    - Social hierarchy
    - High levels of sympathetic activity
    - Amygdala important role in aggression related to social hierarchy
29
Q

How can surgery reduce human aggression?

A

Amygdalectomy
Psychosurgery - now treatment of last resort

The results are:

  • Reduced aggressive behaviour
  • Relief from anxiety
  • Profound, unpleasant side effects
30
Q

Cat experiements of neural components of anger and aggression

A
  • In an experiement conducted on cats, the removal of the cerebral hemispheres but not the hypothalamus showed behaviour of sham rage which is extremely angry, cat started hissing, opening its mouth showing its teeth.
  • When the anterior hypothalamus was removed, the cats still has a sham rage.
  • However, when the posterior hypothalamus was removed, the cats have NO sham rage.
31
Q

Electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus

A

Leads to effective and predatory aggression showing that the hypothalamus plays a role in aggression as well

32
Q

Elicited affective aggression

A

Stimulation of the medial hypothalamus just for show

33
Q

Elicited predatory aggression

A

Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus went for the kill

34
Q

Two hypothalamic pathway to brain stem involving autonomic function

A
  • Medial forebrain bundle -> ventral tegmental area; predatory aggression
  • Dorsal longitudinal fasciculus -> periaqueductal gray matter; affective aggression
35
Q

Serotonin and aggression

A
  • Low levels of serotonin increases aggression
  • Serotonin antagonists increase aggression and agonists decrease anxiety and aggressiveness
  • Blocking serotonin receptors induces aggression