L1 & L2 - Emotion

Question 1

What are emotions?

Answer 1

States elicited by rewarding or aversive stimuli and their omission and termination
Comprise thoughts and behavioural responses to emotional
We cannot generalise this to animals because we don’t know

Question 2

What are the evolutionary considerations?

Answer 2

Responses to aversive and positive stimuli have fundamental survival value and preserved throughout evolution

Question 3

What are the implications of using rats in studying emotion?

Answer 3

Advantages - easy to breed and keep, well established behavioural tests, large enough brain
Disadvantages - genetic manipulations are difficult

Question 4

What is the difference between fear and anxiety?

Answer 4

Fear - phasic escape or avoidance response e.g. someone walks in with a gun
Anxiety - tonic response and uncertainty

Question 5

What is the importance of the amygdala?

Answer 5

Lesions in the central and lateral amygdala had less fear response showing they aren’t responsible for fear in those parts of the amygdala

Question 6

What is the importance of the hippocampus?

Answer 6

Ventral hippocampus and conditioned fear freezing
Innate anxiety response

Question 7

What is the association between rewards and emotional states?

Answer 7

A reward is an object or event that elicits approach and is worked for
Rewards are associated with wanting and liking
Feelings of desire or pleasure

Question 8

What is the meso-corticolimbic dopamine system?

Answer 8

Rewards increase NAC dopamine
Systematic and intra NAC dopamine antagonists block responses normally maintained by the reward

Question 9

What is Cholinergic projection from PPTg to VTA?

Answer 9

Electrical self-stimulation
Cholinergic drugs are self-administered into VTA

Question 10

What is the glutamate projections from mPFC to VTA?

Answer 10

Electrical self-stimulation
Stimulate dopamine release in NAc