Lecture 16 Emotion

Question 1

Emotion vs. Mood

Answer 1

Emotion: Rapid-onset, specific responses to specific events that give us information about our current situation.

Mood: More gradual onset, and it isn’t so clear what they are caused by. State of being. Give us information about our current state of self, our inner system. “I’m in a bad mood and I don’t know why” (it’s important to be aware of what could have triggered it, or what’s causing it, but yeah)

Question 2

Define Emotion

Answer 2

Definition: A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. Instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from knowledge.

Psychology Definition: (focus on this one) A complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behaviour. Two components: physical state of emotion and cognitive experience of emotion (feeling).

Question 3

Emotion: Internal vs. External

Answer 3

• Can produce internal (increases in heart rate, blood pressure, “butterflies” and external (verbal statements “I am furious!”, facial expressions (smiling), and thoughts related to the experience) behaviours.•
• Emotional states in others can provoke emotional states in ourselves.
• Can cause “emotional fatigue” or secondary trauma

Question 4

Affective Neuroscience

Answer 4

• Study of the neural mechanisms of emotion.
• Interdisciplinary field which combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood.

Question 5

Darwin & basic emotional states

Answer 5

• Charles Darwin was one of the first people to recognize the significance of basic emotional states.
• He suggested that they occur innately in children and are not learned.
• He suggested that there are universal emotional states that all humans express, primarily through facial expressions.

Question 6

Emotion and Facial Expression:

The Fore Tribe study

and implications

Answer 6

• One of the first systematic cross-cultural studies of facial expressions was performed by studying the emotional expressions of the Fore tribe.
• These people had never been exposed to Western culture.
• Despite this, when shown photos of facial characteristics of specific emotional states, participants were very accurate in attributing emotions to the expressions.
• participants were also shown to make facial expressions similar to those of Europeans in response to emotional stimuli.

What does this mean?

implies universal basic emotions in all humans.

(Darwin was right in his theorizing)

Question 7

Eckman’s requirements of an emotion (7 elements)

Answer 7

Ekman (1998) suggested for an emotional state to be considered basic it had to exhibit seven elements:

• Distinctive facial expression.
• Distinctive physiological state.
• Facial expression and physiological state occur together and are relatively difficult to separate.
• Almost instantaneous onset of the facial expression and physiological states, which lasts only for a brief duration.
• Distinctive eliciting stimuli.
• Automatic appraisal of the eliciting stimuli, not as a result of deliberate cognitive appraisal. Furthermore, this appraisal is not desired or deliberate, as it is automatic.
• Similar expressions of emotional states in the related primates.
• Said there were more (8 more, or beyond the 8) that don’t meet his aforementioned criteria
• ”micro-expressions” is a thing

Question 8

Adaptive Value Theory of emotion

Answer 8

• Emotional states are thought to motivate us to perform certain behaviours that may also be adaptive.
• Emotional states act as signals to ensure that behaviours occur (or do not occur) appropriately, especially in social situations.
• Mechanisms that solve or avoid previously encountered problems.
• Some signals are more salient than others.
• Some emotions (ex. Lust) are not necessarily adaptive, and therefore not signalled/shown

Question 9

James-Lange Theory

Answer 9

(Fake it till you make it)

Suggests that cognitive aspects of emotional states are secondary to a physiological response.

• Research supporting this: studies which show that when people make a particular facial expression, they tend to interpret neutral events on the basis of their facial expressions.
• The “smile” group (pencil in mouth) gave cartoons higher “funny” ratings than the “frown” group, and control group was in the middle.
• Studies that show that quadriplegic people experience a decrease in the intensity of their emotions.

Question 10

Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

Answer 10

Cannon-Bard Theory aka Thalamic theory of Emotion (a response to James Lange theory)

•We feel emotions & experience physiological reactions simultaneously

emotional states occur too quickly to result from monitoring physiological responses.

•cognitive aspects of affect could be experienced even when individuals could not sense any physiological changes.

Theory: an emotion-inducing stimulus goes through the thalamus, which communicates with the cortex which produces related cognitions. Then the hypothalamus activates the HPA axis – releases hormones that signal physiological emotional response.

Evidence:

• Spinal cord injuries (humans and animals).
• Bilateral face paralysis. (can still express emotion/experience it in other ways
• Illness-induced physiological responses.

Question 11

Shachter- Singer Theory of Emotion

Answer 11

• All about context. (similar to Cannon-Bard, but focuses on context)
• Argues that brain constructs emotion similarly to other experienced sensations; the brain takes signals from the periphery and interprets and translates them into emotional states.
• Therefore, similar emotions can produce different feelings depending on the context of the event.

Question 12

Emotional Stroop Task

Answer 12

• Measures attentional bias to emotional stimuli.
• Participants must name the ink colour of presented words while ignoring the words themselves.
• In general, participants have more difficulty detaching attention from affectively valenced words, than neutral words.
• Attentional biases have been found (ex, bias toward spider-related words, fear) by this task

Question 13

Somatic Marker Theory of Emotion

Answer 13

• Emotion is presented to the brain similarly to how senses are presented, that is, a large amount of information is obtained from the body to produce a unified percept (in this case, an emotional state).
• Learning based)
• The association between emotional states and bodily change is the somatic marker.
• Suggests that somatic markers are the basis on which we make decisions.

Question 14

Appraisal Theory of Emotion

Answer 14

• Argues that emotional states are the process of cost-benefit analysis of situations.
• The affective-cognitive part of the emotional states occurs when the person consciously examines the unconscious appraisal.
• Suggests that emotional states differ from one another because they have different appraisals. That is, emotional states are action tendencies that serve to alert organism and to provide various possibilities for action.
• Emotions related to action-tendencies
• Limitation is that theory is cognitive-heavy (it’s an unconscious process) but likely too far away. Brain assesses physiological response unconsciously, etc?

Question 15

Neuroanatomy of Emotion:

Localizationist Approach

Answer 15

• Hypothesizes that all basic emotional states can be localized to either a distinct brain region or defined networks of brain regions.
• That several emotion categories are biologically basic.
• Each basic emotion category is also said to share other universal characteristics: distinct facial behaviour, physiology, subjective experience and accompanying thoughts and memories.
• Emotions inherited biologically

Question 16

Neuroanatomy of Emotion:

Psychological Constructionist Approaches

Answer 16

• Hypothesizes emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger and disgust etc are constructed when many different systems in the brain work together.
• networks of brain regions underlie psychological operations (e.g., language, attention, etc.) that interact to produce many different kinds of emotion, perception, and cognition.
• Emotions emerge when neural systems underlying different psychological operations interact (not just those involved in valence and arousal), producing distributed patterns of activation across the brain.
• Explains why you have different levels of emotion: B/c emotion goes through different pathways/areas (eg.prefrontal)

Question 17

Laterality of Emotion (LH/RH dominance)?

Answer 17

• Many studies have demonstrated a left ear advantage for reporting the emotional tone of either words or sentences, indicating RH dominance.
• Left ear advantage is obtained even when sounds are non-speech sounds but have emotional tones eg, coughing, crying, laughing.

Question 18

Limbic system

Answer 18

• Hypothalamus – a big part of HPA-axis responsible for stress hormones, etc
• Amygdala – very alert to emotion. Produces negative emotion, esp. fear/threat. Judges salience of threat
• Thalamus
• Cingulate gyrus - anterior cingulate cortex – as pictures. Particularly ant., motivated behaviour, (LU)
• Hippocampus -

Question 19

Other brain structures involved in Emotion:

Answer 19

• Basal ganglia. (activating starting/stopping movement, action-selection) IF salient enough to go through Basal ganglia, it will regulate movement
• Orbitofrontal cortex –
• Or prefrontal? imagination, thinking through your emotions (intellectualizing)
• Prefrontal cortex.
• Ventral striatum. Nucleus accumbens thought to be overactive w addictions
• Insula. (heart rate, breathing,
• Cerebellum – a lot of recent work shows emotion regulation (lesion studies, shows a deficit of positive emotions, )

Question 20

How the brain produces an anxiety response

Answer 20

• We perceive something that makes us feel fear or anxiety.
• Thalamus sends this information to our amygdala.
• The amygdala checks in with our hippocampus, to see whether we have previous memories that might inform us as to how to behave in the situation now.
• If our hippocampus shoots back painful emotional memories, we respond with fear and anxiety.
• Strong emotions can cause our rational brain to shut down.
• Survival response is activated.

Question 21

Psychology of Humour

Answer 21

• (humour can be dissected like a frog, but it dies in the process)
• Humor is a complex process involving cognitive, affective, interpersonal and social elements in an interpersonal context.
• Its cognitive core is based on the perception of incongruity between two related inconsistent or contradictory mental representations.
• The total or partial resolution of incongruity in a playful frame is associated with a specific positive emotion.
• Highly subjective

Complex because:

• What was funny 20 years ago may not be funny today.
• Meanings of such terms as ‘humour’, ‘funny’, ‘mirth’ and ‘hilarity’ vary not only with time but also among languages and cultures.
• Stimuli which produce laughter depend on the person and context and mood etc.

Question 22

Lack of Humour

Answer 22

• Humour is associated with increased activity of CNS, heart rate, muscle tension, altered respiratory system.
• Lacking, or losing (such as through brain injury) a sense of humour can very be damaging to one’s social interactions and self-esteem.
• Having difficulty appreciating and understanding humour is a key feature of many psychological and neuropsychological conditions, including Autistic Spectrum Disorders, psychotic conditions, certain acquired brain injuries and some forms of dementia.

Question 23

Humour Brain Regions: Perception of vs. expression of

Answer 23

Neuroimaging shows that the perception of humour involves:

• Right frontal cortex (may be coming up with spatial representations of a joke)
• Prefrontal cortex (higher-level executive area involved in personality).
• Temporal regions (memory centers).
• Cerebellum

Neuroimaging studies have revealed that the physical expression of laughter involves:

• The amygdala (emotion centre).
• Thalamic, hypothalamic and subthamalicregions.
• Brainstem.
• Frontal lobes.
• Motor cortex.

Question 24

Humour and Frontal Lobes

Answer 24

• Damage to the right hemisphere, particularly the right frontal lobe has been shown to disrupt the ability to appreciate humour.
• Disorders of humour such as foolishness and a tendency toward making inappropriate jokes have also been reported in patients with damage to the frontal lobes.
• It is thought that the right frontal lobe may be unique in integrating cognitive and affective information, to allow us to appreciate jokes and other emotive material.

Question 25

Laughter Pathways

Answer 25

The expression of laughter seems to depend on two partially independent neuronal pathways:

• An ‘involuntary’ or ‘emotionally driven’ system, involves the amygdala, thalamic/hypo-and subthalamic areas and the dorsal/tegmental brainstem.
• A ‘voluntary’ system originates in the premotor/frontal opercular areas and leads through the motor cortex and pyramidal tract to the ventral brainstem.
• These systems and the laughter response appear to be coordinated by a laughter‐coordinating center in the dorsal upper pons.

Question 26

Abnormal Laughter

Answer 26

• Because they are associated with different parts of the brain, disorders of laughter can occur independently of disorders of humour.
• Difficulties with expressing laughter are most commonly associated with a type of stroke known as pseudobulbar palsy when laughter can be intermixed with crying.
• ‘Laughing’ seizures are associated with tumours in the hypothalamus.

Question 27

Epileptic Laughter

Answer 27

Gelastic epilepsy:

• Relatively rare seizures in which laughter is the cardinal symptom.
• These seizures can consist exclusively of laughing but often occur in association with general autonomic arousal and automatisms of movement and/or disturbed states of consciousness.

Three brain areas connected to gelastic epilepsy:

• Hypothalamus, most commonly in the form of hypothalamic hamartomas, which are non‐neoplastic malformations composed of hyperplastic neuronal tissue resembling grey matter.
• Frontal poles.
• Temporal poles.

Question 28

Pathological Laughter

Answer 28

What is it?

• Laughter that is inappropriate to the situation in which it arises.
• The patient can be aware of this inappropriateness but, nonetheless, powerless to control the laughter.
• Often triggered by trivial stimuli.

Why does it occur?

• There is evidence that pathological laughter is influenced by serotonergic and dopaminergic transmission (shown when symptoms are ameliorated by SSRIs).
• Pathological laughter has been associated with brain lesions found in areas ranging from the frontal cortex and the pyramidal tracts to the ventral mesencephalon and the pons.
• The neurophysiological action of most of these lesions seems likely to be due to chronic disinhibition of the laughter‐generating circuitry.
• Not super common, but does happen

Question 29

How does humour help the brain?

Answer 29

The humour effect:

•A psychological phenomenon that causes people to remember information better when that information is perceived as funny or humorous. Helps with learning.

How does it work?

• Humor activates the brain’s dopamine reward system, stimulating goal-oriented motivation and long-term memory, which means that humour can improve retention in students of all ages.
• Due to increased attention (interest) and increased encoding. Energizing effect.
• Many studies show that when children laugh, it enhances their attention, motivation, perception, memory, and learning.
• Ex. Sesame Street, makes kids laugh, teaches
• Choose humorous educational games for Yanna’s iPad….