Emotion

Question 1

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 \_\_\_

Answer 1

hypothalamus, thalamus,
cingulate, and hippocampus.;
amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia

Question 2

The Papez circuit concept has proved to be more descriptive than functional, as ___

Answer 2

many limbic regions are involve in more than emotion processing

Question 3

Cognitive neuroscience research, while acknowledging the concept of emotion processing, no longer considers only one ___

Answer 3

neural circuit of emotion

Question 4

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.
)

Answer 4

specialised for emotion processing;
serve many functions;
detect threat signals

Question 5

Kluver and Bucy (1939) first documented damage to medial temporal lobes caused ___ in monkeys, featuring a lack of or tendency to ___.

Answer 5

‘psychic blindness’;
fear;
approach objects normally eliciting a fear response

Question 6

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 ___.

Answer 6

calcification of the medial temporal lobe;

amygdala

Question 7

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 __

Answer 7

emotion in facial expression;

fear from her

Question 8

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 __.

Answer 8

conditioned fear response

Question 9

Damage to the amygdala impairs __ fear responses.

However, amygdala lesions don’t block the ___.

Answer 9

conditioned;

exhibition of fear (e.g., startle response)

Question 10

Damage to the amygdala appears to block the ability to ___ the conditioned response to the neutral stimulus.

Answer 10

acquire and express

Question 11

The lateral nucleus of the amygdala acts as a convergence area for information from multiple brain regions, allowing for the ___.

Answer 11

formation of associations underlying fear conditions

Question 12

The central nucleus of the amygdala initiates an emotional response if a stimulus, after being analysed, is determined to be __

Answer 12

threatening or dangerous

Question 13

Information about an aversive stimulus can reach the amygdala via two routes, the low road and the high road.
The low road is ___

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Information about an aversive stimulus can reach the amygdala via two routes, the low road and the high road.
The high road is ___

Answer 14

A slower pathway, but provides more thorough processing that can confirm the initial low road information.

Question 15

The amygdala’s role in learning to respond to aversive stimuli is implicit.
Implicit because ___

Answer 15

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)

Question 16

In humans, we can assess conditioned responses by asking subjects to report ___

Answer 16

if they know a stimulus represents a potential aversive consequence

Question 17

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 ___

Answer 17

the parameters of fear conditioning and essentially what is supposed to happen;
she knew a shock would follow whenever the light was
presented

Question 18

While the amygdala is critical to implicit fear learning, it also plays a role in emotional responses to stimuli whose emotional properties are learned __

Answer 18

explicitly

Question 19

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 __.

Answer 19

modulating the storage of these events;

memory enhancement

Question 20

Neuroimaging studies have shown that activity in the amygdala during the
presentation of emotional stimuli is correlated with __

Answer 20

arousal-enhanced recollection of these stimuli

Question 21

The amygdala doesn’t appear important to consciously labelling a stimulus as good, bad, arousing or neutral, but does appear to be important for __

Answer 21

normal responses to social

stimuli, in particular facial expressions

Question 22

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 __.

Answer 22

fearful;

attention is directed to the face

Question 23

A common problem with studies of emotion,

particularly those using neuroimaging is __.

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Cocaine Stroop: Cocaine users suffer significant
interference from __ in comparison to controls.
Both groups are distracted by __

Answer 24

cocaine related pictures;

evocative stimuli

Question 25

Selectively attending to
stimuli in the presence of
incongruent or salient
stimuli requires __

Answer 25

top-down control

Question 26

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

Answer 26

orbitofrontal cortex

Question 27

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

Answer 27

orbitofrontal cortex

Question 28

fMRI studies suggest the anterior insula activity is correlated with both the detection (in others) and
experience of __

Answer 28

disgust

Question 29

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.

Answer 29

cortically;
insight;
empathy

Question 30

Theories argue that the insula, rather than processing emotion,
might be involved in all subjective feelings because __

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD): A progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder. Its three subtypes are __

Answer 31

Semantic dementia
Progressive nonfluent aphasia
Behavioural variant

Question 32

The behavioural variant of FTD presents with __

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Pathology in bvFTD is ___

Answer 33

• 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

Question 34

Familial links in bvFTD are __

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

Deficits in emotion recognition in bvFTD: __

Answer 35

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.

Question 36

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 __.

Answer 36

impaired;

variable

Question 37

bvFTD have poor facial and dynamic emotion recognition.

Correlation between volume of __ damage and negative face emotion recognition.

Answer 37

amygdala

Question 38

bvFTD have poor emotion evaluation and __.

Answer 38

social inference

Question 39

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 __.

Answer 39

negative;

positive

Question 40

Social inference was measured with video vignettes: actors
presented sincere, sarcastic or paradoxically sarcastic statements.
FTD group had significant
difficulty detecting __.

Answer 40

sarcasm

Question 41

FTD patients with poor sarcasm detection had greatest grey matter
volume reductions in the
__, but with significant
effects in other regions

Answer 41

amygdala

Question 42

In FTD, regression analysis showed the quality of insight across all patients related to grey matter intensity in __ and __ regions.

Answer 42

OFC;

frontopolar

Question 43

In FTD, quality of emotion insight across all patients was related to grey matter
intensity in __, __
and __ regions.

Answer 43

frontopolar;
amygdala;
hippocampal

Question 44

Tasks of __ might contribute to increasing diagnostic accuracy.
bvFTD patients tend to perform more poorly on emotion recognition tasks than __ patients and __ patients.

Answer 44

emotion processing;
Alzheimer’;
Huntington’s

Question 45

__ tend to have impaired theory of mind, empathy, moral judgement and interpretation of social situations

Answer 45

bvFTD patients

Question 46

Generally, small samples of clinical studies has prevented analysis of the
relationship between emotion processing problems and __.

Answer 46

day-to-day functioning

Question 47

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 __.

Answer 47

mood scales;

better emotion recognition was associated with being rated as more emotionally reactive by their carers.