Fear and Emotions Flashcards
What are the 3 major theories?
James-Lange, Cannon-Bard,
and Two-Factor
James-Lange
Emotions start with psychological arousal, which then causes conscious emotional feelings
Cannon-Bard
Proposes that the psychological and conscious components of emotion are actually independent
Ex: see a bear, tell yourself that you should feel scared, then at the same time you experience a physiological response
Just because you have the arousal does not mean that you are feeling fearful
Two-Factor
says that CNS interprets arousal and context to generate conscious feelings
Depending on the context will determine what emotion is felt
Conditioned Fear
a neutral stimulus (CS, tone) is paired with a painful stimulus (US, foot shock) learned quickly, hard to extinguish
Ex: you get a bad grade every time in a specific room. You then start to feel fear simply by walking into classroom
Conditioned Escape
negative reinforcement: response → take away ongoing noxious stimulus
Press the lever to terminate ongoing foot shock
Swim to a platform to terminate being in cold water
Learned quickly, hard to extinguish
Emotional Memory Recall (Flashbulb Memories)
very emotional events that lead to particularly vivid episodic memories
Suggest that emotion can greatly increase memory encoding
However, more detailed studies show that memories for highly emotional decay over time
Central Amygdala
organizes the expression of emotional responses. Stimulation can cause positive and negative emotions and outbursts of rage. Disruptions lead to impairments of emotional learning in humans and other animals
Lateral Amygdala
collects inputs and seems to encode emotional relevance of stimuli. Fast and rough input direct from the thalamus: gets to the amygdala quickly but minimal processing doesn’t allow for fine distinctions between stimuli. Slow but accurate input for the cortex; gets to the amygdala more slowly but inputs are more accurate
Basolateral Amygdala
modulates memory to increase the storage of emotional memories. Imaging studies show that emotional events activate the amygdala. The degree of amygdala activation predicts a memory boost for emotional material
Hippocampus
hippocampal lesions have no effect on fear conditioning of the CS-US relationship.
Abolished contextual learning, training apparatus no longer provokes fear response
Amygdala and hippocampal activity during memory retrieval correlates with rating of emotional intensity
hippocampal/amygdala activity enhanced for successful retrieval of the emotional pictures relative to the neutral ones
Amygdala is more involved in the process
Frontal Cortex
plays an important role in emotional processing:
Mood regulation: damage to the cortex leads to dysregulation of emotion
Social cues related to mood
Fear learning
PTSD
Physiologically:
Cortisol levels remain low and persistent
MRI studies show that individuals with PTSD have smaller hippocampal volumes
Possible drug treatment:
Drugs like propranolol interfere with epinephrine, reducing stress reaction
With administration, the patient may be less likely to develop PTSD
