emotional learning

Question 1

emotions

Answer 1

• three distinct, interrelated sets of phenomena
  1. physiological responses (heart rate), 2. overt behaviour (facial expression),
  3. conscious feelings (subjective experience)
• in response to an affecting situation
• not all huamns manifest their emotions identically: culture, men and women show same physiological measures but women are more likely to express happiness and sadness

Question 2

fear response

Answer 2

• set of responses that accompany emotion of fear

Question 3

arousel

Answer 3

• collection of bodily responses
• prepare body to face a threat
• known as flight or flight response
• increased blood flow to the muscles, increased respiration, decreased digestion and immune function

Question 4

Autonomic nervous system

Answer 4

• collection of nerves and structures
• control internal organs and glands
• operates autonomously
• threar triggers ANS to signal adrenal glands: release of stress hormones, norephinephrine, glucorticoids

Question 5

stress

Answer 5

• stimulus or event
• cause bodily arousal
• triggers release of stress hormones

Question 6

epinephrine

Answer 6

fight or flight response

Question 7

glucocorticoids

Answer 7

• class of stress hormones
• cortisol
• fight or flight response

Question 8

james lange theory of emotion

Answer 8

• conscious feelings occur when mind sense the physiological responses
• somatic theory of emotion: physiological responses to stimuli come first, evoke given emotion
• smile inducing
• ” We are afraid because we run”

Question 9

Modern Emotional Theory

Answer 9

• combination of cognitive appraisal and perception of biological changes together determines our experience of emotion
• arousal imporant but not sufficient
• injected epinephrine and put into room with instructed person: caused bodily aruosal, interpreted according to context
• physiological responses contribute to conscious feelings
• contect helps us interprete
• high bridge study: misinterpretation of feeling of arousal
• popularity of horror movies: context lets us interprete arousal as joy

Question 10

emotions in nonhuman animals

Answer 10

• unsure whether animal consciously feels the emotion
• fear responses across species: piloerection (fear response in mammals)
• physiological responses do not equate conscious feelings: conditioned fear responses do not create conscious feeling of fear
• yum and ugh responses: rats show similar reactions to sweet and bitter food as humans
• laughter-like responses in other mamals

Question 11

learning emotional responses

Answer 11

• conditioned emotional responses
• conditioned escape
• conditioned avoidance
• learned helplessness

Question 12

conditioned emotional responses

Answer 12

• learning to predict danger
• rats immobile after shock: avoiding predetors, allocate full attention
• not learned but innate response
• CS-US association leading to CR
• same time animal learns a freezing CR other fear responses are also conditioned
• snail aplysia: withdraws its frill (CR) in response to gentle touches (CS) predicting a tail shock (US)

Question 13

conditioned escape

Answer 13

• escape or terminate an eversive stimulus
• foot shocks until pressing a lever
• form of operant conditioning
• negative reinforcement
• fast learning response

Question 14

conditoned avoidance

Answer 14

• avoid or prevent exposure to an aversive stimulus
• rat presses lever before foot shock (warning)
• escape is learned before avoidance
• two factor theory of avoidance learning: interaction between classical conditioning and operant conditioning, first classical (association is made), operant conditioning (avoidance response, negative reinforcement), response should extinguish, avoidance behaviour is resistant to extinction
• cognitive expactancies theory: cognitive expactancies compete for which behaviour is expressed: animal compares possible outcomes

Question 15

learned helplessness

Answer 15

• exposure to an uncontrollable punisher
• teaches an expectation that responses are ineffectual
• reduces motivation to attempt avoidance
• dogs with prior exposure
• related to depression

Question 16

effect of emotions on memory storage

Answer 16

• strong emotions affect the storage and retireval of episodic memory
• emotional memory tends to be rehearsed frequently
• emotion and encoding
• emotion and retrieval

Question 17

emotion and encoding

Answer 17

• cahill story experiment: pictures accompanied with emotional or neutral story, emotional group remembered middle better, better overall
• related to advertisement

Question 18

emotion and retrieval

Answer 18

• mood congruency of memory: easier to retrieve memories that match our current mood and emotional state
• sad mood leads to recall of sad memories: leads to vicious cycle, depression
• flashbulb memories: memory formed under conditions of extreme emotions, vivid, long lasting, not more accurate

Question 19

amygdala

Answer 19

• central processing station for emotion
• collection of brain nuclei: lateral nucleus (input from the thalamus or thalamus-cortex), central nucleus (input from amygdala nuclei, output: ANS), basolateral nucleus (input: lateral nucleus , output: cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, hippocampus, modulates memory storage and retrieval)
• critical in emotional responses and emotional modulation
• central nucleus
• two pathways for emotional learning in the amygdala
• amygdala and episodic memory storage
• role of stress hormones

Question 20

central nucleus

Answer 20

• expressing emotional responses
• stronger in animals than in humans (two factor theory)
• damge disrupts ability to learn and display emotional responses (deficits in skin conductance response)
• conditioned fear response mght be stored in the lateral nucleus
• central nucleus as messanger
• might encode aspects of emotional learning: aversive or appetetive

Question 21

pathways of emotional learning

Answer 21

• direct pathway: thalamus - amygdala, less detailed, quick reaction
• indirect pathway: thalamus - cortex - amygdala, slower, disrimination
• bear in the zoo vs. bear in the wild
• learning from such an experience might take place in the lateral nucleus: neural connections change as result of neutral CS paired with a fear evoking US, rats and odors (after learning lateral nucleus responds strongly to almond odor)

Question 22

amygdala and episodic memory

Answer 22

• emotional arousing story
• amygdala damage have no tendency to have beter recall later
• amgdala provides signal to strengthen the storage of information in declarative memory
• degree of activation correlates with effectivness of storage: PET scans
• determines whether new information gets stored as episodic or semantic: emotional arousal might promote encoding of contextual detailes
• difference in sex: women left, men right

Question 23

role of stress hormones

Answer 23

• output from the central nucleus to the ANS
• activates adrenal glands and stress hormones are released
• mediates fight or flight response
• cannot affect brain directly: blood-brain barrier
• activates brainstem nuclei: release norepinephrine
• brainstem nuclei project to the basolateral nucleus
• sends output to the hippocampus and cortex
• cerebral cortex is primary storage site for episodic memory: mediated by hippocampus, basolateral nucleus fires in rhythmic waves, facilitates LTP between coactive neurons
• increasing levels of noepinephrine: disruption of norepinephrine transmission impairs emotional memory, Larry Cahill (blocking stress hormones reduces ability of emotions to enhace memory, increasing can facilitate, epinephrine injections during consolidation facilitate)

Question 24

encoding emotional contexts in the hippocampus

Answer 24

• CS-US association not dependant on the hippocampus
• contextuaal freezing is reduced in rats with hippocampal lesions
• bilateral amygdala damage: prevents learning a conditioned response, can establish CS-US relation, no response
• two-way path: amygdala projects to the hippocampus, hippocampus projects to the amygdala (going back to an emotionally charged place evokes new emotions)

Question 25

frontal lobe and emotions

Answer 25

• ability to express emotions
• ability to read them
• lesion: fewer facial expressions, inability to recognize negatice facial expressions in others
• emotionless or hyperemotional
• helps maintaining emotional balance
• fMRI study with neutral and fearful face: amygdala activation is higher (fearful face), frontal lobe activation is higher (neutral face)
• appropriate emotional response: bear wild vs. zoo

Question 26

phobias

Answer 26

• excessive and irrational fear, anxiety, panic attacks
• two categories: specific phobies (specific contexts or objects), agoraphobia (generalized fear)
• panic attacks (epinephrine is released, fight or flight response)
• classical conditioning can induce phobias: little alber experiment
• not everyone who has a fear-evoking expereince develops a phobia
• treating phobias: systematic desenzitisation, virtual realty therapy
• hyperactive amygdala
• abnormalities in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula

Question 27

PTSD

Answer 27

• syndrome developed after a horrific events
• symptoms: re-experiencing, emotional numbing, hightened anxiety
• persist for months year
• causes and treatment: classical conditioning ( helplessness and terror, event functions as US: co-occuring stimuli becoming strongly associated)
• differs from specific phobias: triggered by a variety of stimuli, faster learning but impaired extinction, people bounce back (“resilience”) or recover over time
• fMRI shows that PTSD reduces the ability to use the PFC to inhibit hippocampal function (directed forgetting)
• vulnerability to PTSD: smaller hippocampal volumes, hightened amygdala reactions, strong social support reduces likelyhood of PTSD