Emotions Flashcards
How can emotions be defined?
States elicited by rewarding or aversive stimuli and their omission or termination.
How can emotions be measured?
by measuring physiological/behavioural responses.
Which regions play a key role in emotion?
prefrontal cortex, meso-corticolimbic dopamine system, hippocampus, amygdala and hypothalamus
How could anxiety and fear be characterised without reference to subjective feelings?
a state caused by presence of aversive stimulus
Phelps & LeDoux (2005)t think that the amygdala played a central role in conditioned fear?
because it received inputs from auditory and somatosensory systems
What is useful about neurotoxic lesions?
Only neurons in that region are destroyed, not any other connections from other areas. This means a direct link between neurons and behavioural responses can be made
The lateral amygdala responds to aversive stimuli and then after making associations will produce the same response to a neutral stimulus. What can be said about the lateral amygdala?
The LA neurons have fear-conditioning-related plasticity
The ___________ is involved in fear responses, perhaps because of it’s close connections with the amygdala and hypothalamus.
hippocampus
Hippocampal lesions increase the time rats spent in the open arms of the elevated plus maze. What does this finding indicate?
hippocampal lesions reduce anxiety.
People with panic disorder have less _____ in the left hippocampus. More activity in the hippocampus is related to anxiety responses.
inhibition
Define reward
an object or event that elicits approach and is worked for. It is associated with wanting and liking.
What techniques are used to identify brain substrates of reward?
classical: instrumental conditioning, intracranial electrical self-stimulation, intracranial drug self-administration and intracerebral microdialysis to measure neurotransmitters.
Where in the brain is dopamine produced?
substantia nigra and VTA
Describe the mesolimbic dopamine pathway
Dopaminergic neurons project from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens thus increasing the dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens.
Describe the mesocortical dopamine pathway
Dopaminergic neurons project from the VTA to the PFC.
Dopamine produced by the nucleus accumbens is associated with _____ rather than pleasure.
desire (wanting)
Dopamine _________ block behavioural effects of rewards such as lever pressing and approach.
antagonists
How can pleasure (liking) and desire (wanting) be differentiated?
Berridge & Robinson (2003) came up with an objective measure of liking based on facial expressions.
Dopamine receptors increase “wanting” and ____ receptors increase “liking”
opioid
Dopamine isn’t only associated with reward but also fear-related responses. True or false?
true
The nucleus accumbens elicits both appetitive and _____ behaviours. These are mediated by ______.
defensive, dopamine.
What is an implication of the discovery of the overlap between brain substrates of positive and negative emotions?
The brain substrates such as dopamine, nucleus accumbens and amygdala may not play a specific role in emotions but instead contribute to cognitive processes associated with aversive and appetitive stimuli (e.g salience signalling and attention)
