H5 Mechanisms of motivation and emotion Flashcards
What is motivation?
Refers to the entire constellation of factors (inside and outside) that cause an individual to behave in a particular way at a particular time.
What is motivational state or drive?
Is it a hypothetical construct?
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.
What are incentives/reinforcers/rewards/goals?
The sought-after objects or ends that exist in the external environment.
How do drives and incentives complement one another and influence one another in their contributions to motivation?
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.
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?
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.
What is homeostasis?
constancy of internal conditions that the body must actively maintain. Involves outward behavior and internal processes.
What is the distinction bewteen regulatory and nonregulatory drives, and how can mammalian drives be classified into five categories based on function?
Regulatory drives help preserve homeostasis, while non-regulatory drives serve other purposes.
- Regulatory drives
- Safety drives
- Reproductive drives
- Social drives
- Educative drives
What are the 4 possible explanations of the universal human drives for art, music and literature (= aesthetic drives)?
- Enhance status in social group
- Impress members of opposite sex
- Natural extension of drives to play and explore
- Tap into many of the already existing drives.
What is the central-state theory of drives?
Different drives correspond to neural activity in different sets of neurons in the brain
What is the central drive system?
Set of neurons in which activity constitutes a drive
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?
- Must receive and integrate the various signals that can raise or lower the drive state.
- ## Must act on all the neural processes that would be involved in carrying out the motivated behavior.
- Located at the base of the brain/ at the hub of central drive systems
- Strongly interconnected with higher areas of the brain
- DIrect connections to nerves connected to internal organs
- Many capillaries > sensitive to hormones and other substances in the blood
- Connected to pituitary gland > control release hormones
What are interrelated components of the concept of reward?
- Wanting (desire to obtain it)
- Liking (subjective feeling)
- Reinforcing (effects that rewards have in promoting learning)
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?
Damage to these areas destroys all sorts of motivated behavior and animal will die if they don’t function at all.
What neurotransmittes are associated with wanting and liking?
In which area are they released?
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
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?
Learning component of reward is related to the wanting component.
- Dopamine promotes LTP in nucleus accumbens
- 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.
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?
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
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)?
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).
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?
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.
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?
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).
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?
New food presented > renewed appetite > sensory specific satiety
Classical conditioning
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?
Adopted children correlate stronger with body weight biological parents than adoptive parents.
Prenatal nutrition plays a large role (predictive adaptive response).
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?
- Awake, nonattentive: alpha
- Wake, attentive: beta
- Sleep stage 1: transition stage
- Sleep stage 2
- Sleep stage 4: delta
Waves are controlled by thalamus.
How do REM and non-REM sleep differ and how do they cycle through the night?
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.
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?
Feels like a real event, true dream.
Datyime thinking but ineffective
