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Neurophysiology & Human Behaviour > Emotion & Anxiety > Flashcards

Emotion & Anxiety Flashcards

1
Q

What are emotional behaviours?

A

Behaviours driven by a need to fulfil internal and social goals.

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2
Q

What are the types of emotional responses?

A
  • Subjective: Verbal description of how an individual ‘feels’.
  • Behavioural: Defined as what an individual does consciously, including:
    1. Social interactions
    2. Facial expressions
  • Psychophysiological: Autonomic responses as a result of certain emotions:
    1. Increased heart rate
    2. Increased respiration rate
    3. Secretion of stress hormones including adrenaline and glucocorticoids
    4. Muscle tension
    5. EEG (cortical arousal)
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3
Q

What are the ‘core’ emotions?

A
  1. Fear
  2. Sadness
  3. Anger
  4. Happiness
  5. Disgust
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4
Q

What are the complex emotions?

A
  1. Fear → Embarrassment + worry
  2. Sadness → Grief
  3. Anger → Envy + Jealousy + Contempt
  4. Happiness → Joy + Love + Nostalgia
  5. Disgust → Guilt + Shame
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5
Q

What is a positive emotional reinforcer?

A
  • Something that an individual wants and will work to obtain (e.g. food, mate…).
  • When it is obtained, it gives individual positive emotions.
  • When it is lost, it gives individuals negative emotions.
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6
Q

What is a negative emotional reinforcer?

A
  • Something that an individual will work to avoid (e.g. painful stimulus).
  • When it is successfully avoided, it gives individual positive emotions.
  • When it is unsuccessfully avoided, it gives individual negative emotions.
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7
Q

What are the experimental methods of measuring psychophysiological responses to emotions?

A
  1. Heart rate: Measured using ECG or heart-rate monitor
  2. Blood pressure: Measured using blood pressure monitor
  3. Sweating: Measured using the galvanic skin resistance
  4. Cortical arousal: Measured using EEG and desynchronisation of cortical neuronal activity
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8
Q

What is the James-Lange theory of emotion?

A
  • Stimulus → Cognitive evaluation → Behavioural response → Emotional experience
  • The brain generates an appropriate autonomic response to certain stimuli and it is the detection of these responses in the body that then elicit an emotional experience.
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9
Q

What is the Schacter-Singer theory of emotion?

A
  1. External stimuli elicited visceral response and visceral response elicits emotional experience appropriate to the external stimuli if no other explanation for the visceral response is presented.
  2. If visceral response can be explained independent of the external stimuli, no emotional experience is elicited.
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10
Q

Why is hunger not considered an emotion?

A
  • It is a sensation, not an emotion.
  • It does not trigger cognitive appraisel.
  • It can trigger emotions that elicit cognitive appraisel (e.g. fear of death by starvation).
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11
Q

How can the hippocampus be damaged?

A

Rabies

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12
Q

What are the consequence of damage to the hippocampus?

A

Emotional disturbances

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13
Q

What are the consequences of damage to the cingulate cortex?

A
  • Apathy
  • Depression
  • Loss of emotional spontaneity
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14
Q

What are the consequences of damage to the amygdala (in monkeys)?

A

“Psychic blindness”:

  • Tameness
  • Lack of emotional responsiveness
  • Hypersexual behaviour
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15
Q

What are the structures involved in emotional processing?

A
  1. Hypothalamus
  2. Amygdala
  3. Orbitofrontal cortex
  4. Ventral striatum
  5. Cingulate cortex
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16
Q

What are the different forms of anxiety and how can they be treated?

A
  1. Somatic anxiety: Anxiety results from bodily symptoms (e.g. palpitations, hyperventilation). In these cases, patients struggle to quantify why they are anxious. Treatment = β-blockers
  2. Psychic anxiety: Anxiety resulting from external stressors. In these cases, patients know exactly what the causes of their anxiety are. Treatment = Benzodiazepines
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17
Q

What is the function of the amygdala in emotions?

A

The amygdala is very important in learning the emotional significance of certain stimuli.

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18
Q

What impairments do lesions of the amygdala cause in terms of responses to fear?

A
  1. Lesion of the amygdala eliminates fearful responses to conditioned stimuli.
  2. Lesions of the amygdala also impair recognition of fearful faces.
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19
Q

What are anxiety disorders (neuroses)?

A

A range of disorders whereby the healthy response to, and the anticipation of, fear, becomes dysfunctional.

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20
Q

What are the normal responses to fearand anxiety?

A
  1. Subjective changes: Feeling of dread and impending harm.
  2. Behavioural changes: Mental preparation for “fight or flight” response.
  3. Physiological changes: Physiological preparation for “fight or flight” response, including ↑HR, increased breathing rate…
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21
Q

What are the types of anxiety disorders?

A
  1. Phobias
  2. Panic disorders
  3. Post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD)
  4. Agoraphobia
  5. Generalised anxiety disorder
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22
Q

What are phobias?

A

Irrational fear of specific objects/situations.

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23
Q

What are panic disorders?

A

Characterised by sudden debilitating attacks of anxiety.

24
Q

What are post-traumatic stress disorders?

A

Anxiety or intrusive thoughts following an accident, injury or traumatic experience.

25
Q

What are agoraphobias?

A

Fear of public spaces, usually as a consequence of worrying about having panic attack.

26
Q

What are generalised anxiety disorders?

A

Uncontrollable, pervasive worries and anxiety over often irrational/trivial events.

27
Q

What are the characteristics of phobias?

A
  1. Persistent fear of objects or situations despite most people finding them tolerable.
  2. Outside phobic situations, the patient is aware that phobias are irrational.
  3. Fear is disproportional to true danger represented by the objects/situations.
  4. Individuals change their daily routine in order to avoid contact with phobic objects/situations.
28
Q

What are the types of phobias?

A
  1. Specific phobias: Fear of objects, animals, activities, illnesses or injuries.
  2. Social phobias: Fear of being observed in public as a result of not wanting to be humiliated/embarrassed.
  3. Agoraphobia: Fear of crowds and public spaces.
29
Q

What is the gender specificity of phobias?

A

Phobias are more common in women (~8%) compared to men (~4%)

30
Q

What is the heritability of phobias?

A
  • First-degree relatives of patients with phobias are 3x more likely to also develop phobias
  • Twin studies have shown that phobias have 30-40% heritability
  • Heritability refers to phobias in general and not specific types of phobias
31
Q

What is Mowrer’s 2-factor model of phobias?

A
  1. Pavlovian conditioning causes phobias to develop.
  2. Operant conditioning (i.e. avoidance) maintains phobias.
32
Q

How does avoidance maintain phobias and prevent extinction?

A
  1. Avoidance allows the patient to interpret the absence of US with CS as a ‘lucky escape’ instead of making the link that CS does not actually relate to US.
  2. Avoidance also acts as negative reinforcement, in the sense that it relieves anxiety. Patients are therefore more likely to avoid phobic situations in order to obtain this relief.
33
Q

What other factors contribute towards development of phobias?

A
  1. Biological preparedness
  2. Vicarious conditioning
34
Q

What evidence is there for biological preparedness?

A
  1. Rhesus monkeys shown videos of parents reacting negatively towards both snakes and flowers are more likely to develop phobias against snakes. (Mineka 1984)
  2. Patients were conditioned to respond with a general stress response (GSR) in the presence of pictures of snakes or flowers (CS) in presence of a shock (US). The GSRs in extinction were measured when CS presented without US. The GSRs in extinction for snakes was much greater compared to flowers. (Ohman 1975)
35
Q

How can phobias be treated?

A
  1. Flooding
  2. Modelling
  3. Systematic desensitisation
36
Q

What is flooding?

A

Continued exposure to phobic object (CS) until patient realises that there are no associated dangers with it (US).

37
Q

What is modelling?

A

Watching an individual react non-fearfully in the presence of a phobic objects (e.g. person handling spider).

38
Q

What is systematic desensitisation?

A
  1. Train patient in relaxation technique.
  2. Present patient with a series of situations relating to the phobic object, each increasing in severity (e.g. from toy spider to real spider).
  3. For each situation, wait until the patient no longer elicits any fear response and then move on to the next situation.
39
Q

What is the cognitive model for phobias?

A
40
Q

What are the predisposing factors?

A
  1. Pavlovian conditioning
  2. Biological preparedness
  3. Vicarious conditioning
41
Q

What are the precipitating factors?

A

In some instances, phobias may not show until much later in life. This could be due to a change in environment that increases the exposure of an individual to the phobic object.

42
Q

What are the triggering factors?

A

Phobic object itself

43
Q

What are the maintaining factors?

A
  1. Avoidance: Avoiding object and operant conditioning to maintain phobia.
  2. Hyper-vigilance: Constantly checking for the object.
  3. Thought suppression: Trying not to think about object, further perpetuating its significance.
44
Q

What is the neurological basis of phobias?

A
  • Over-activity of amygdala: Amygdala is involved in normal response to conditioned fearful stimuli.
  • Under-activity of prefrontal cortex: May have a role in suppressing activity of the amygdala in response to fearful stimuli.
45
Q

What is the mechanism of action of benzodiazepines?

A
  • Increases GABA effects by acting on GABA-A receptors in the amygdala and has general inhibitory effect on neurotransmission.
  • Gives an “anxiolytic effect” whereby the suppression of normal activity due to presentation of fearful CS (phobias) is reduced.
46
Q

What is “release of conditioned suppression”?

A

Release of conditioned suppression: Disturbances to normal behaviour by fearful conditioned stimuli reduced when benzodiazepines are administered (correlation between extent of reduction and clinical effectiveness of drugs in humans).

47
Q

What are examples of benzodiazepines?

A
  • Valium (diazepam)
  • Librium (chlorodiazepoxide)
48
Q

What are the side-effects of benzodiazepines?

A
  • Tolerance and dependence
  • Aversive withdrawal syndrome
  • Amnesia
49
Q

What are the symptoms of aversive withdrawal syndrome?

A
  • Insomnia
  • Loss of appetite
  • Anxiety
50
Q

What are benzodiazepines used to treat?

A
  • Generalised anxiety disoders
  • Less effective at treating panic disorders/phobias
51
Q

What are the drugs used to treat anxiety disorders that act on the 5-HT system?

A
  • Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
  • 5-HT1A receptor agonists
52
Q

What are the effects of the 5-HT system on anxiety disorders?

A
  • Individuals with polymorphism (short allele) that decreases efficiency of 5-HT transporter show greater reaction of amygdala towards fearful stimuli than those with normal activity (long allele)
  • They have increased chance of developing anxiety disorders
53
Q

What is the mechanism of action of SSRIs?

A
  • Reduces rate of 5-HT reuptake and prolongs its action.
  • This is paradox as it would suggest that short allele 5-HTT individuals should be resilient to anxiety due to higher levels of 5-HT.
54
Q

Why is medication not effective against phobias/panic disorders?

A
  • Medication helps combat anxiety associated with these conditions.
  • It does nothing to stop triggering factor from causing anxiety. These need to be treated using psychiatric therapy.
55
Q

What are the explanations for paradoxical action of SSRIs?

A
  • SSRIs act to treat anxiety via independent of raising levels of 5-HT in brain. May be relating to up-/down-regulation of 5-Ht receptors. This accounts for long time for it to take action.
  • 5-HTT transporter causes predisposition to anxiety via its influence on brain development as opposed to soley an increase in 5-HT in brain.

Neurophysiology & Human Behaviour (20 decks)

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