Exam3Lec6Amygdala,Fear,andEmotion Flashcards
What is an emotion?
Short lived biopsychosocial phenomenon that can promote adaptation.
Emotions can be ____ or ____
adaptive: if they optimize adjustment to ongoing demand.
maladaptive: if emotions interfere with effective adaptations.
Example of an emotion
Fear
Short lived
Consists of physiological changes for action (fight or flight)
What is a mood?
Moods consist of persistent biases that prepare the organism for emotional events.
What is an example of a mood?
Anxiety: Consists of sustained arousal, vigilance and apprehension of vague potential threats.
A mood can be ____ or ____
adaptive: Adaptive if mood enhances function responses to emotional events
maladaptive: Maladaptive if mood interferes with day/day functioning
What are 4 examples of disorders of fear/anxiety?
- Panic Disorder
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder
- Social Anxiety Disorders
- Phobias.
Disorders of fear/ anxiety is characterized by what?
a dysregulated fear/anxiety response
- Disproportionate response to the event and produces maladaptive behavior.
- Overgeneralized response which occurs outside of situations it should be expected to occur and produces maladaptive behavior.
What are regions involved in Emotion/Mood? and what are they responsible for?
Broca’s Limbic Lobe
1. Thalamus: Responsible for processing sensory inputs
2. Cingulate Gyrus: Responsible for emotional experience.
3. Hippocampus: Responsible for understanding context of the experience.
4. Hypothalamus: Responsible for emotional expression
5. Neocortex: Responsible for emotional coloring
Septum/Septal Area
Temporal lobe/Amygdala
You get home after a long day of studying and as soon as you turn on the lights of your apartment, someone jumps out and screams at you!
Explain how each region below plays a role in your emotion/mood
* Thalamus
* Hippocampus
* Hypothalamus
* Neocortex
- Thalamus: Sensory Inputs – People screaming at you out of nowhere.
- Hippocampus: Context – This person is a friend and other friends are here too; Today is my birthday. This is a surprise birthday party!
- Hypothalamus: Emotional expression – vasodilation, flushing – Joy/Happiness
- Neocortex: Emotional coloring – I’m exhausted; I have a ton of work to do tonight and want to get to it so I can sleep – ambivalence, frustration.
How is the septum/septal area involved in emotion/mood? Lesions of the septum leads to what?
- Responsible for temperance/regulation of emotional responses.
- Lesions of the septum disinhibit the hypothalamus which leads to explosive violence and extremes of emotions.
How is the temporal lobe/amygdala involved in emotion/mood?
- Temporal lobectomy leads to decreased fear, aggression, vocalizations and facial expressions
- Klüver-Bucy Syndrome
What is Klüver-Bucy syndrome?
is a very rare cerebral neurological disorder associated with damage to both temporal lobes resulting in abnormalities in memory, social and sexual functioning and idiosyncratic behaviors.
How does the amygdala play a role in fear?
The Amygdala is a substrate for learning fear. With experience, the amygdala changes how it responds to sensory inputs that are paired with aversive stimuli.
What occurs if you stimulate the amygdala?
Stimulation of the amygdala causes increases vigilance or attention.
Fearful faces produce greater amygdala activity than happy/neutral faces
What occurs if you have a bilateral amygdalectomy?
reduces fear and aggression in animals.
S.M. case study: Inability to recognize fear in facial expressions
Explain fear conditiong with the rat
Unconditioned Stimulus (Shock) ->Unconditioned Response (Fear)
Neutral Stimulus (Cue or Context) + US (Shock) ->UR (Fear)
Conditioned Stimulus (Cue or Context) -> Conditioned Response (Freezing)
Extinction of fear conditioning depends on what?
Context
our minds can associate fear with a specific context
Explain the experiment where they performed extinction training on the rat in blue room
Fear acquisition
Fear Retrieval
Extinction acquisition
Fear renewal
Fear reinstatement
Spontaneous recovery
If previous context is reintroduced (i.e. placing mouse in green/purple room), the conditioned fear response will still be present.
If the mouse was placed in the blue room, it will learn that it’s safe there because as they sounded the tone over time with no shock, the rat learned that its safe in the blue room only.
In other words, mammals have an innate ability to distinguish safe from unsafe spaces. During fear/anxiety disorders, the ability to distinguish between safe and unsafe spaces in impaired.
if you have anxiety or fear this extinction is inhibited ( can distinguifh a safe or unsafe environement)
Fill in the black boxes. What are the function and actions?
Explain what occured in this experiment and results
Experiment: mice had lesions in the Basolateral Amy (BL) and Hippocampul formation (HF) and no lesions in the control (SH)
Results: there was a significant decr in freezing for context and tone/cued conditional stimulation in mice with lesion in BL.
The trial mice were not experiencing fear further strengthening the theory that the LA is responsible for fear conditioning.
Pathways of contextual control of extinctions
- Hcc->BLA & Hcc->PL-> BLA are involved in context dependent expression of fear
- Hcc->IL->CEA involved in suppression (extinction) of fear responses following extinction
Remember:
Anterior “Aversion” Neurons of the BLA respond to negative valence stimuli and have reciprocal connections with the PL cortex. Hence their role in EXPRESSION of fear along with the Hippocampus.
Posterior “Reward” Neurons of the BLA respond to positive valence stimuli and have reciprocal connections with the IL cortex. Hence their role in SUPPRESION of fear along with the Hippocampus.
Expain the pathway of how prolonged activation of the basolateral amygdala
factor (CRF) onto the BNST produces a heightened state of arousal and vigilance (anxiety).
Fill in boxes
