Emotion and Cognition Flashcards
Why is the amygdala considered to be a central hub for emotional processing?
Medial position, highly interconnected structure, receives direct input from thalamus/olf bulb (sensory) for fast evaluation, also gets slower input from cortical areas
Animals show a lack of startle response if you lesion their
amygdala
binocular rivalry is a technique to determine salience. Describe it
different images are shown to separate eyes VERY briefly (unconscious perception), the one which is more salient is perceived
emotional stimuli are ___ salient
more
what is an attentional blink
if what you are attending (target) is shown and another target comes rapidly after it you tend to miss it
Rapid Serial Visual Perception task (RSVP) is
When detecting a target word, your ability to percieve a second target sucks if it’s presented rapidly after first target(attnl blink) BUT if the word is emotionally charged (like ‘rape’) effect is attenuated.
The effect of the attentional blink on RSVP tasks is ____ in people with amygdala damage
not observed. This is because the emotional tagging of targets is impaired.
what causes an item to “pop out” of a display
uniqueness along a dimension, emotional aspects
Happy/Angry and snakes/flowers, which pops out faster?
Angry and Snakes. Potentially threatening stimuli are more salient
McGaugh’s hypothesis of memory states that the amygdala can enhance memory along two routes: describe them
direct route : through synaptic projections to MTL and frontal ctx
indirect: hormone release activates the HPA axis
how does administration of propanolol affect memory?
(adrenaline blocker) decreases memory for emotional content (like amygdala lesion) neutral content is unaffected
Damasio came up with what idea about biasing decision making?
somatic marker hypothesis… tested with Iowa gambling test
somatic marker is the physical rep of the memory… not necessarily explicit memory but it exists, and can influence decision making. EX HM not wanting to shake hands. Iowa gambling test SCR too.
what brain region is important for decision-making/ selection of actions
orbital frontal lobe; esp VMPRF
Describe the Iowa Gambling Task
2 decks, 1 good 1 bad. Initially, they both don’t give punishment so bad deck is pref. because of large reward. Later, you realize that the large punishment of the bad deck is not worth and switch to good deck. SCR predicts a change in behavior long before participants even have a hunch of what’s up.
How do patients with VMPRF lesions fair in the IGT?
They continue to choose from the bad decks , even though they get an idea of good/bad they still choose bad. They also don’t get a change in SCR
