H5 Mechanisms of motivation and emotion

Question 1

What is motivation?

Answer 1

Refers to the entire constellation of factors (inside and outside) that cause an individual to behave in a particular way at a particular time.

Question 2

What is motivational state or drive?

Is it a hypothetical construct?

Answer 2

Internal condition that orients an individual toward a specific category of goals and that can change over time in a reversible way. Hypothetical construct because they can’t be directly observed.

Question 3

What are incentives/reinforcers/rewards/goals?

Answer 3

The sought-after objects or ends that exist in the external environment.

Question 4

How do drives and incentives complement one another and influence one another in their contributions to motivation?

Answer 4

They complement each other in the control of behavior. If one is weak the other must be strong and vice versa.
They influence each other’s strength.

Question 5

How is the concept of homeostatis related to that of drive? How is this relationship demonstrated in the case of a little boy who craved salt?

Answer 5

Drives help us to keep our body in homeostasis.
Due to the wisdom of his body the boy had a strong drive for salt. Nobody was aware that he needed this salt to survive due to deficient adrenal glands.

Question 6

What is homeostasis?

Answer 6

constancy of internal conditions that the body must actively maintain. Involves outward behavior and internal processes.

Question 7

What is the distinction bewteen regulatory and nonregulatory drives, and how can mammalian drives be classified into five categories based on function?

Answer 7

Regulatory drives help preserve homeostasis, while non-regulatory drives serve other purposes.

1. Regulatory drives
2. Safety drives
3. Reproductive drives
4. Social drives
5. Educative drives

Question 8

What are the 4 possible explanations of the universal human drives for art, music and literature (= aesthetic drives)?

Answer 8

1. Enhance status in social group
2. Impress members of opposite sex
3. Natural extension of drives to play and explore
4. Tap into many of the already existing drives.

Question 9

What is the central-state theory of drives?

Answer 9

Different drives correspond to neural activity in different sets of neurons in the brain

Question 10

What is the central drive system?

Answer 10

Set of neurons in which activity constitutes a drive

Question 11

In theory, what 2 characteristics must a set of neurons have to function as a central drive system? What 5characteristics of the hypothalamus seem to suit it to be a hub of such a system?

Answer 11

1. Must receive and integrate the various signals that can raise or lower the drive state.
2. ## Must act on all the neural processes that would be involved in carrying out the motivated behavior.
3. Located at the base of the brain/ at the hub of central drive systems
4. Strongly interconnected with higher areas of the brain
5. DIrect connections to nerves connected to internal organs
6. Many capillaries > sensitive to hormones and other substances in the blood
7. Connected to pituitary gland > control release hormones

Question 12

What are interrelated components of the concept of reward?

Answer 12

1. Wanting (desire to obtain it)
2. Liking (subjective feeling)
3. Reinforcing (effects that rewards have in promoting learning)

Question 13

What is evidence that the medial forebrain bundle and nucleus accumbens are essential pathways for the effects of a wide variety of rewards?
What happens if they don’t function at all?

Answer 13

Damage to these areas destroys all sorts of motivated behavior and animal will die if they don’t function at all.

Question 14

What neurotransmittes are associated with wanting and liking?
In which area are they released?

Answer 14

Dopamine helps motivate to obtain the rewad (wanting), but is not essential for the pleasure associated with the reward (liking, endorphin).
The larger the expected reward, the greater the degree of dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. Bothe neurotransmitters are released in nucleus accumbens

Question 15

What evidence (2x) suggests that dopamine is crucial to the capacity of rewards to promote new learning that is to serve as reinforcers?

To what component of reward is learning related?

Answer 15

Learning component of reward is related to the wanting component.

1. Dopamine promotes LTP in nucleus accumbens
2. Dopamine is released into nucleus accumbnes when animals anticipate and receive reward. When the cues and responses leading to a reward have already been well learned, there is no need for further reinforcement of that learning and dopamine release in response to the reward ceases.

Question 16

How does an understanding of the brain’s reward system help us to understand drug addiction and compulsive gambling?
What brain area is activated by dopamine?

Answer 16

Drugs activate the dopamine receiving neurons int he nucleus accumbens becasue they look/act like dopamine > super learning.
Normal rewards only activate dopamine neurons when reward is unexpected + no pleasure and more wanting

Question 17

What is meant by feedback control and how does the acrcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus serve as a control center for apetite (what type of neurons does it have, 2x)?

Answer 17

The substance or quality being regulated feeds back upon the controlling device and inhibits the production of more of that substance or quality when an appropriate level is reached.
Through 1. appetite stimulating neurons and 2. appetite surpressing neurons. They both release slow-acting neurotansmitters which have the capacity to alter neural activity for long periods of time (min-hours).

Question 18

what is the evidence that the hormone PYY helps reduce appetite after a meal and that underproduction of PYY may contribute to obesity?
On what area does it wok on?

Answer 18

Injection of PYY > people eat less and report less appetite (both slim and obese).
Lean subjects have a higher baseline of PYY.
PYY is released after eating a large meal. It influences the arcuate nucleus and therefore reduces hunger.

Question 19

How does the hormone leptine conbribute to weight regulation and why isn’t leptin a good anti-obesity drug?
On which area does leptin act on?

Answer 19

Released by fat cells > acts on hypothalamus to reduce appetite.
Overweight people have enough leptin and additional leptin has no effect (brain insensitive to hormone).

Question 20

How do conditioned stimuli and the availablity of many foods, with different flavors contribute to appetite and obsesity?
What is the name of this process?

Answer 20

New food presented > renewed appetite > sensory specific satiety
Classical conditioning

Question 21

What is the evidence that within a culture, differences in body weight result mostly from differences in genes but across cultures environment plays a large role?

Answer 21

Adopted children correlate stronger with body weight biological parents than adoptive parents.
Prenatal nutrition plays a large role (predictive adaptive response).

Question 22

How does a person’s EEG change as the person goes from alert to relaxed to various stages of sleep?
5 stages
By which area are the waves controlled?

Answer 22

1. Awake, nonattentive: alpha
2. Wake, attentive: beta
3. Sleep stage 1: transition stage
4. Sleep stage 2
5. Sleep stage 4: delta

Waves are controlled by thalamus.

Question 23

How do REM and non-REM sleep differ and how do they cycle through the night?

Answer 23

REM: more brain activity and dreaming
As the night progresses, less non-REM and more REM with every 90 min cycle.
REM sleep occurs between stage 4 and next sleep cycle.

Question 24

What are some general characteristics of dreams that people describe when aroused from REM sleep and how do these differ from the sleep thought that people more often describe when aroused from non-REM sleep?

Answer 24

Feels like a real event, true dream.

Datyime thinking but ineffective

Question 25

What is the preservation and protection theory of sleep?

Answer 25

Sleep came about in evolution to preserve energy and protect individuals during that portion of each 24-hour day when there is relatively little value and considerable danger in moving about.
Also explains differences in the time of day at which different species sleep.
Sleep pattern might be in part a vestigal trait a carryover from a period when the night was a time of great danger.

Question 26

What evidence supports the body restoration theory of sleep and what are some limitations of the theory?

Answer 26

Body tissue breaks down with sleep deprivation.

Does not explain differences among species in sleep time and sleeping during day or night.

Question 27

What evidence supports the theories that REM sleep promotes the maintenance of brain circuits?

Answer 27

1. Synapses degenerate if they are inactive for too long.

2. Fetuses spent more time in REM sleep across species

Question 28

How might dreams be explained as inevitable consequences of the state of the brain during REM sleep?

Answer 28

Neurons in visual and motor cortex and involved in meaning are active.

Question 29

How does insomnia differ from nonsomnia?

Answer 29

Insomnia; involuntary sleep deprivation + tired while awake

Nonsomnia: voluntarily sleep little and feel rested while awake.

Question 30

What is some evidence that the sleep drive is affected by an internal clock, located in the hypothalamus, that can opeate even without external time cues?

Answer 30

In an artificial time free environment animals and humans continue to have a sleep drive in a cyclic manner over 24h

Question 31

What is circadian rhythm? And what controls it? What does it also control (2 things)?

Answer 31

Repetitive biological change that continues at close to a 24-hour cycle in the absence of external cues.
Nucleus of the hypothalamus: suprachiasmatic nucleus. Also controls a daily rythm of body temperature and certain hormones, like melatonin produced by pineal gland.

Question 32

What is some evidence that the internal clock is continuously reset by daily changes in light? Through what pathway does that resetting occur?

Answer 32

In experimental settings clock can be changed by changing light exposure.
Neurons that run from retinas of eye to suprachiasmatic nucleus.

Question 33

What is emotion? And affect? Affect runs along which 2 dimensions? And mood?

Answer 33

Subjective feeling that is mentally directed toward some object.
The feeling associated with emotion independent of the object. 2 dimensions: pleasant/unpleasant and degree of mental and physical arousal.
Mood: long lasting, free floating feeling, independent of object

Question 34

What is the discrete emotion theory?

Answer 34

The belief that basic emotions are innate and associated with distinctive bodily and facial reactions. Extention of Darwin’s view.

Question 35

What is James’s theory of emotion?

How does it differ from common sense theory?

Answer 35

First the body reacts automatically to stimulus in environment, then emotion follows (supported by modern evidence). Vice versa from common sense theory.

Question 36

How does Schachter’s theory differ from James’s? And Ekman’s theory?

Answer 36

James:
Perception + thought > type of emotion
Physical response > intensity emotion.

Schachter: physical response > cognitive labeling > emotion

Ekman: person’s facial response influences a person’s feeling of an emotiona and also influences the person’s bodily responses to the emotional situation.

Question 37

By which 2 routes receives the amydala input?

What are 2 functions of output from amygdala?

Answer 37

Rapid subcortical route: analyzes incoming info even before that info has been processed by sensory areas of the cerebral cortex.
Slower cortical route: it analyzes in more detail info that has been processed by cerebral cortex. Amygdala sends output to many other brarin structures. Through those outputs it alerts the rest of the brain to pay attention to the stimulus of concern and it generates such bodily reactions as increased heart rate and muscle tension.

Question 38

What is some evidence that the PFC is involved in the conscious feeling of emotions and that the right and left PCF are differentially involved with different types of emotional responses?

Answer 38

PFC lobotamy > relief emotions
Right: withdrawal motivation (mostly negative)
Left: approach motivation (mostly positive and anger)

Question 39

Wat is de genetische misvatting (genetic fallacy)?

Answer 39

De aanname dat onze genen een directe invloed hebben op ons gedrag, in plaats van een indirecte invloed via de interactie met de omgeving