emotional learning Flashcards
1
Q
emotions
A
- 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
2
Q
fear response
A
- set of responses that accompany emotion of fear
3
Q
arousel
A
- 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
4
Q
Autonomic nervous system
A
- 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
5
Q
stress
A
- stimulus or event
- cause bodily arousal
- triggers release of stress hormones
6
Q
epinephrine
A
fight or flight response
7
Q
glucocorticoids
A
- class of stress hormones
- cortisol
- fight or flight response
8
Q
james lange theory of emotion
A
- 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”
9
Q
Modern Emotional Theory
A
- 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
10
Q
emotions in nonhuman animals
A
- 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
11
Q
learning emotional responses
A
- conditioned emotional responses
- conditioned escape
- conditioned avoidance
- learned helplessness
12
Q
conditioned emotional responses
A
- 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)
13
Q
conditioned escape
A
- escape or terminate an eversive stimulus
- foot shocks until pressing a lever
- form of operant conditioning
- negative reinforcement
- fast learning response
14
Q
conditoned avoidance
A
- 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
15
Q
learned helplessness
A
- exposure to an uncontrollable punisher
- teaches an expectation that responses are ineffectual
- reduces motivation to attempt avoidance
- dogs with prior exposure
- related to depression
16
Q
effect of emotions on memory storage
A
- strong emotions affect the storage and retireval of episodic memory
- emotional memory tends to be rehearsed frequently
- emotion and encoding
- emotion and retrieval
17
Q
emotion and encoding
A
- cahill story experiment: pictures accompanied with emotional or neutral story, emotional group remembered middle better, better overall
- related to advertisement
18
Q
emotion and retrieval
A
- 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
19
Q
amygdala
A
- 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
20
Q
central nucleus
A
- 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
21
Q
pathways of emotional learning
A
- 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)
22
Q
amygdala and episodic memory
A
- 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
23
Q
role of stress hormones
A
- 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)
24
Q
encoding emotional contexts in the hippocampus
A
- 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)
25
Q
frontal lobe and emotions
A
- 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
26
Q
phobias
A
- 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
27
Q
PTSD
A
- 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
