Emotion Flashcards
James Papez (1937) first proposed a circuit theory of emotion processing in the brain, involving a network of brain regions including the \_\_\_ MacLean (1949) who named this the Papez circuit, extended the network to include the \_\_\_
hypothalamus, thalamus,
cingulate, and hippocampus.;
amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia
The Papez circuit concept has proved to be more descriptive than functional, as ___
many limbic regions are involve in more than emotion processing
Cognitive neuroscience research, while acknowledging the concept of emotion processing, no longer considers only one ___
neural circuit of emotion
Depending on the emotional task or situation, different neural systems will be involved. These systems might involve brain regions that are ___, along with others that ___.
For example, brain regions that support attentional vigilance are also recruited to ___. (They multitask.
)
specialised for emotion processing;
serve many functions;
detect threat signals
Kluver and Bucy (1939) first documented damage to medial temporal lobes caused ___ in monkeys, featuring a lack of or tendency to ___.
‘psychic blindness’;
fear;
approach objects normally eliciting a fear response
S.M., famous case study of a woman with Urbach-Wiethe disease, a genetic
mutation condition that causes ___.
In S.M. ‘s case, it led to degeneration of the ___.
calcification of the medial temporal lobe;
amygdala
The case of S.M, who had bilateral amygdala degeneration:
Displayed inappropriate social behaviours, unable to recognise __, no monetary loss aversion, and experimenters were unable to elicit __
emotion in facial expression;
fear from her
Conditioned fear experiments have been used to understand the function of the amygdala.
- Where a neutral stimulus acquires aversive properties by virtue of being paired with an aversive event, and produces a __.
conditioned fear response
Damage to the amygdala impairs __ fear responses.
However, amygdala lesions don’t block the ___.
conditioned;
exhibition of fear (e.g., startle response)
Damage to the amygdala appears to block the ability to ___ the conditioned response to the neutral stimulus.
acquire and express
The lateral nucleus of the amygdala acts as a convergence area for information from multiple brain regions, allowing for the ___.
formation of associations underlying fear conditions
The central nucleus of the amygdala initiates an emotional response if a stimulus, after being analysed, is determined to be __
threatening or dangerous
Information about an aversive stimulus can reach the amygdala via two routes, the low road and the high road.
The low road is ___
a subcortical pathway in which sensory information about a stimulus is
projected to the thalamus, which in turn sends a crude signal to the amygdala
indicating whether the visual stimulus roughly resembles an aversive (or
conditioned) stimulus. Can occur without any conscious processing.
Information about an aversive stimulus can reach the amygdala via two routes, the low road and the high road.
The high road is ___
A slower pathway, but provides more thorough processing that can confirm the initial low road information.
The amygdala’s role in learning to respond to aversive stimuli is implicit.
Implicit because ___
the learning is expressed indirectly, through a behavioural or physiological response, such as an autonomic nervous system arousal (e.g, increased heart rate, blood pressure)
In humans, we can assess conditioned responses by asking subjects to report ___
if they know a stimulus represents a potential aversive consequence
Although patients with amygdala damage fail to show an indirect fear
response (e.g., +BP), they can report ___.
Electric shock experiments with S.M. have shown that while she does not
show a conditioned response to the stimulus paired to shocks (a light), she reported that ___
the parameters of fear conditioning and essentially what is supposed to happen;
she knew a shock would follow whenever the light was
presented
While the amygdala is critical to implicit fear learning, it also plays a role in emotional responses to stimuli whose emotional properties are learned __
explicitly
Amygdala activity can enhance the strength of explicit memories for
emotional events by __.
The modulation is typically indirect, for example, by modulating arousal to
emotional events, which in turn, modulates __.
modulating the storage of these events;
memory enhancement
Neuroimaging studies have shown that activity in the amygdala during the
presentation of emotional stimuli is correlated with __
arousal-enhanced recollection of these stimuli
The amygdala doesn’t appear important to consciously labelling a stimulus as good, bad, arousing or neutral, but does appear to be important for __
normal responses to social
stimuli, in particular facial expressions
Activity in the amygdala is greatest for __ expressions, in comparison to all
other expressions.
The greater response is observed when stimuli are subliminal, but is further
enhanced when __.
fearful;
attention is directed to the face
A common problem with studies of emotion,
particularly those using neuroimaging is __.
Imaging requires repetitive presentation of the same stimulus type in order to
identify a reliable signal average.
Repeated presentations of emotive stimuli produce habituation, with smaller self- report and physical responses to the stimulus over time.
Cocaine Stroop: Cocaine users suffer significant
interference from __ in comparison to controls.
Both groups are distracted by __
cocaine related pictures;
evocative stimuli
Selectively attending to
stimuli in the presence of
incongruent or salient
stimuli requires __
top-down control
fMRI studies indicate they as a facial expression looks increasingly angry (by rater
agreement), activity in the __ increased. The same effect could not be found for other categories of expression
orbitofrontal cortex
Studies have presented angry stimuli (either visual or auditory) singularly, or
in combination with other categories of stimuli, and demonstrated __ activity increasing in activity when the angry stimuli are attended to
orbitofrontal cortex
fMRI studies suggest the anterior insula activity is correlated with both the detection (in others) and
experience of __
disgust
The experience of disgust and the detection of disgust in others appear to be highly corelated, at least ___.
The insula cortex may therefore be critical in understanding conditions such as ASD, where __ and __ may be lacking.
cortically;
insight;
empathy
Theories argue that the insula, rather than processing emotion,
might be involved in all subjective feelings because __
it represents current and predictive states allowing for learning of feeling states and uncertainty. Awareness of, or interoception, of afferent representations of the feelings from the body.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD): A progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder. Its three subtypes are __
Semantic dementia
Progressive nonfluent aphasia
Behavioural variant
The behavioural variant of FTD presents with __
Striking changes in behaviour and personality
- Disinhibition
– Socially inappropriate
behaviour, loss of manners, impulsive, rash or careless
Increased apathy/inertia
Loss of sympathy or empathy
Perseverative, stereotyped or ritualistic behaviour
Hyperorality and dietary change
Executive dysfunction
Pathology in bvFTD is ___
- Brain atrophy, most pronounced in mesial and orbitofrontal regions
- Can also have temporal and basal ganglia changes
- Approximately 50% of cases will have tau protein
Familial links in bvFTD are __
Up to 30% of cases have a family history positive, if you include motor neuron
disease cases.
bvFTD appears to have stronger genetic link than PNFA or semantic dementia.
Tau and progranulin are the proteins that are implicated, with markers on Chr 17 and Chr 9.
C90RF72 is a major gene marker of FTD.
Deficits in emotion recognition in bvFTD: __
Negative emotions are typically impaired, happiness generally intact.
Differences in performance are not due to differences in task difficulty.
Recognition of surprise is impaired.
Not modality specific - also impaired recognition of non-verbal stimuli e.g., laughing, retching, crying, movie scenes, music.
Emotion reactivity in bvFTD:
Changes in physiological responses (e.g., BP, skin conductance (SCR) to basic stimuli are __, e.g., aversive loud noise.
To complex stimuli, it’s more __.
impaired;
variable
bvFTD have poor facial and dynamic emotion recognition.
Correlation between volume of __ damage and negative face emotion recognition.
amygdala
bvFTD have poor emotion evaluation and __.
social inference
Emotion evaluation test presents 28 video vignettes with portrayals of positive and negative emotions. Patients had to detect actor
intention, attitude and meaning from 30sec vignette.
FTD group had significantly
poorer recognition of __ emotions, but not __.
negative;
positive
Social inference was measured with video vignettes: actors
presented sincere, sarcastic or paradoxically sarcastic statements.
FTD group had significant
difficulty detecting __.
sarcasm
FTD patients with poor sarcasm detection had greatest grey matter
volume reductions in the
__, but with significant
effects in other regions
amygdala
In FTD, regression analysis showed the quality of insight across all patients related to grey matter intensity in __ and __ regions.
OFC;
frontopolar
In FTD, quality of emotion insight across all patients was related to grey matter
intensity in __, __
and __ regions.
frontopolar;
amygdala;
hippocampal
Tasks of __ might contribute to increasing diagnostic accuracy.
bvFTD patients tend to perform more poorly on emotion recognition tasks than __ patients and __ patients.
emotion processing;
Alzheimer’;
Huntington’s
__ tend to have impaired theory of mind, empathy, moral judgement and interpretation of social situations
bvFTD patients
Generally, small samples of clinical studies has prevented analysis of the
relationship between emotion processing problems and __.
day-to-day functioning
Kipps et al. 2009 did not find a relationship between emotion recognition and activities of daily living, despite deficits on both. Did however find a positive relationship between emotion processing
and __, indicating that __.
mood scales;
better emotion recognition was associated with being rated as more emotionally reactive by their carers.
