Emotion (L9) Flashcards
1
Q
What are the 3 components of emotion?
A
- Cognition
- Feeling
- Action
2
Q
Numan + Woodside
A
Proposed that an emotion is an internal process that modifies the way an organism responds to external stimuli
3
Q
James-Lange theory
A
- An event causes than action that derives a feeling of emotion
- Emotions are embodied (dependent on bodily responses)
- Predicts that people with weak autonomic responses will feel less emotion
4
Q
James-Lange theory: weak autonomic response
A
FOR
- People with paralysis are unable to instigate fight or flight but feel emotion at the same level as before their injury
- Patients with autonomic failure have little difficulty identifying emotion in others but feel their emotions less intensively
- People with botox take longer to read unhappy sentences as they can’t make the emotional response associated
- Patients with locked-in syndrome have problems recognising other’s emotions
AGAINST
- People with somatosensory cortex damage have normal physiological responses to emotional music
- People with damage to prefrontal cortex have weak autonomic responses but normal subjective responses
5
Q
James-Lange theory: increased autonomic response
A
- Spontaneous rapid breathing leads to worry about suffocation and panic attacks (Klein)
- Subjects holding a pen in their teeth (using the smile muscles) rated a comic strip as funnier than those holding the pen in their lips (using the frown muscles)
6
Q
Mobius syndrome
A
- Congenital disorder is which patients exhibit a mask-like expression
- Caused by paralysis of VI and VIIth cranial nerves
- No impairment in recognising facial affects, but impairment in face recognition
7
Q
Cannon-bard theory
A
- Emotional stimuli simultaneously trigger autonomic response and emotional experience in the brain
FOR
- ANS responds too slowly to account for rapid onset of emotional experience
- If non-emotional stimuli (eg. temp) cause the same pattern of autonomic activity, why don’t we feel afraid when we have a fever?
- Not enough unique patterns of autonomic activity to represent the array of unique emotional experience we have
8
Q
Schacter-Singer theory
A
- Different emotions may reflect different interpretations of a single pattern of activity based on environmental context
- Stimuli trigger a physiological state which leads to the interpretation of the event that leads to the experience of an emotion
9
Q
Disgust
A
- Anterior insula (gustatory cortex) contains neurons that respond to pleasant and unpleasant tastes
- Basal ganglia is also involved in feelings of disgust
- Patient with damage to the left insula and basal ganglia who was impaired in recognising disgust in facial expression and in experiencing disgust himself (Calder et al.)
10
Q
Testosterone
A
- Male hormone
- Linked to aggression
- Individuals injected with testosterone had delayed recognition of anger when shown images
11
Q
Serotonin
A
- Low levels linked to aggresion
- Levels can be altered by diet
- Synthesised from tryptophan (high conc of other amino acids blocks the amount of tryptophan that can cross BBB via channel)
- Individuals with less active forms of the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase (converts tryptophan to serotonin) are more aggressive
- The brain releases serotonin during aggressive behaviour and this may magnify the behavioural response
12
Q
Fear and anxiety
A
- Controlled by amygdala which projects to the hypothalamus and prefrontal cortex
- Whalen et al. argue that the pattern of activation in the amygdala is more about detecting ambiguity in the face (activates when comparing fearful/angry and happy faces with neutral faces)
13
Q
Startle response
A
- Animal is presented with a loud noise and a startle response is recorded
- A light is paired with a shock repeatedly
- Then a light precedes the loud noise and increases the startle response
- In rats with amygdala damage there is a startle reflex but no increase from the light stimulus
14
Q
Toxoplamsa Gondii
A
- A parasite that lives and breeds in feline hosts
- The host cat excretes the parasite into the soil = rat ingests faeces and becomes infected = the parasite damages the rat’s amygdala = rat shows no fear when approaching cats = cat eats the rat = cycle repeats
15
Q
Urbach-Wiethe disease
A
- Atrophy of the amygdala caused by calcium accumulation
- Patient SM only reports excitement when shown clips from scary movies. Her fearlessness became a danger to her as she doesn’t recognise dangerous situations
