Emotions 1 & 2 (midterm 5) Flashcards
What are the facets of emotion?
Subjective experience ▫ Feelings, “qualia” • Bodily (physiological) response • Behavioral changes ▫ Facial expressions, gross motor actions • Effects on cognitive processes (strong memories for potent emotional events) Different facets are not always tightly correlated! (e.g. bodily responses and subjective feelings)
What are emotions for? How are they evoked?
• Emotions are evoked by internal or external events that are important ▫ Implications for survival and reproduction • Emotions are evolved responses which configure organisms to respond adaptively to opportunities and threats
Emotions as adaptations
• Emotions are evolved responses which prepare organisms to respond adaptively to opportunities and threats ▫ “Adaptively”: in such a way as to maximize survival and reproduction
Evolution by natural selection • Natural selection produces adaptations that are beneficial:
▫ on average ▫ over the long run ▫ in the environment in which they evolved • For instance, for any one individual, a particular emotion may not be adaptive • May not be adaptive in the modern world
Emotions as adaptations: How do emotions help the organism? • Interpersonal functions
▫ Social signals
Emotions as adaptations: • Intrapersonal functions
▫ Do the right thing at the right time ▫ Do facial expressions have intrapersonal functions?
_____________ enhances sensory acquisition, __________ reduces it.
Expressing fear enhances sensory acquisition, expressing disgust reduces it
Emotion vs. cognition
▫ If cognition is thinking, then emotion is cognition ▫ If cognition specifically means memory, attention, reasoning, then emotion is something different ▫ Emotion often involves the body (physiological responses and motor actions).
• Emotion vs. motivation
▫ Motivation: e.g. thirst, hunger, sexual desire • Closely tied to a bodily state (e.g. if you’re hungry and you eat, bodily state changes and motivation decreases) ▫ Emotions are more enduring and more abstract
• Emotion vs. mood
▫ Moods are prolonged emotions ▫ Emotions proper are more closely tied to a stimulus or event
State vs. trait emotions
▫ State: response directed at a particular stimulus/event ▫ Trait: general tendency to respond with certain emotions
Where do emotions come from?
• The emotional stimulus is not the emotion ▫ This is why two people can have different emotional reactions to the same stimulus • Rather, emotions rely on evaluations (aka appraisals) ▫ e.g., Is it a threat? Can I handle the threat? Was I expecting this? etc. ▫ Can be fast, automatic & unconscious or slower, more effortful & conscious
Role of appraisal in emotions
emotions rely on evaluations (aka appraisals) ▫ e.g., Is it a threat? Can I handle the threat? Was I expecting this? etc. ▫ Can be fast, automatic & unconscious or slower, more effortful & conscious
Basic emotions vs. dimensional models (Basic)
“Basic emotions” ▫ All humans have a set of distinct emotions (anger, surprise, sadness, disgust, fear, happiness) ▫ Distinct emotions associated with different facial expressions, bodily responses, neural correlates, action tendencies ▫ They represent distinct responses to distinct adaptive challenges (e.g. threat/fear, disease/disgust, unexpected stimuli/surprise)
Basic emotions vs. dimensional models ( dimensional models)
Dimensional models ▫ Seemingly distinct emotions can actually be described by simpler dimensions • Common dimensions: ▫ Valence (positive to negative) ▫ Arousal or intensity or activation (weak to strong)
Papez (1937) drew upon the work of Cannon-Bard in arguing that the hypothalamus was a key part of emotional processing, but extended this into a circuit of other regions that included
the regions of the cingulate cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus and anterior nucleus of the thalamus.
Papez circuit
A limbic-based circuit that was once thought to constitute a largely undifferentiated “emotional” brain. Includes the Hippocampus, hypothalamus, anterior thalamus, cingulate gyrus
Papez Circuit (1937) ▫ Hippocampus, hypothalamus, anterior thalamus, cingulate gyrus • Extended to “limbic system” (MacLean, 1949) * outdated but we still use Add:
amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, basal ganglia • Single, unified “emotional brain”
Orbitofrontal cortex
Essential for decision making
Problems with the “limbic system” concept
Undermines ‘unified circuit’ ▫ Some structures more important for other functions (e.g. hippocampus for memory) ▫ Different emotions may have somewhat different circuits
Emotion and the brain: Current concepts • Depending on the emotional task/situation (1) • More specialized:(2) • Less specialized:(3)
(1)several different neural systems may be involved • Systems may involve brain regions more or less specialized for emotional processing (2) amygdala, insula, orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (3) cingulate cortex (attention systems)
Amygdala location and function (animal examples)
Located in the temporal lobe (Add photo -almond) Early evidence: • 1930’s: Kluver-Bucy syndrome ▫ Bilateral amygdala lesions in monkeys ▫ “Tameness”, hyperorality, hypersexuality Rats with amygdala lesions do not avoid cats
Basic emotions vs. dimensional models
Add photo
Amygdala function (human evidence)
Evidence of impaired fear conditioning: ▫ Patients with amygdala damage show reduced skin conductance response to a stimulus (a blue square) that predicts shock, relative to healthy subjects. • Yet by their own report they can learn the blue square shock association ▫ “when I saw the blue square I got a shock” ▫ Patients with hippocampus damage show the opposite pattern.
Patient S.M. -selective, bilateral amygdala lesions due to Urbach- Wiethe disease (Normal vs impaired)
• Normal perception, memory, language, and reasoning provided emotional processing is not required • Does not show normal fear conditioning. • Processing of emotional/socially meaningful information is impaired Could not recognize fearful expressions & could not draw them • Critical role for the amygdala in representing fearful facial expressions
An alternative: Amygdala as salience detector
• Amygdala responds to intensity regardless of valence (both pleasant and unpleasant odors)
Amygdala as salience detector ((Double dissociation))
• In contrast, orbitofrontal cortex responds to valence regardless of intensity
Summary: The amygdala
• In animals, amygdala lesions produce “taming” • In humans, they impair experience of fear and perception of fear expressions • The amygdala plays a wider role in the processing of emotion, perhaps by encoding salience/
