Limbic System/Emotion - Ojemann

Question 1

1. Describe the Anatomy of Broca’s “Great Limbic Lobe”
2. Recognize that “Papez’s circuit” and hypotheses about a “Limbic System” involve some structures that are, and some that are not involved in the physiology
   of emotion

Answer 1

x

Question 2

Define cognition

Answer 2

Cognition: a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences. It includes such processes as memory, attention, language, problem solving, and planning.

Question 3

Define emotion.

Answer 3

Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience of an individual’s state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves “physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience”.

Question 4

Define mood

Answer 4

Moods, like emotions, are affective states. However, an emotion tends to have a clear focus (i.e. its cause is self-evident, while a mood tends to be more unfocused and diffuse. According to Batson, Shaw, and Oleson (1992), mood involves a tone and intensity and a structures set of predictions about future experience of reward or punishment.

–> can last for days to months, even years

Question 5

Define Affect

Answer 5

Affect refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. Affect is a key part of the process of an organism’s interaction with stimuli. The word also refers sometimes to affect display. which is “a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect”

Question 6

What is the function of the Amygdala?

Answer 6

links aversive and appetitive stimuli with physiologic responses, action patterns, perceptions, and predictions

Question 7

What is the function of the ventral tegmental area?

Answer 7

(reward and punishment and salience) signals contribute to synaptic plasticity and associative learning in the amygdala, ventral striatum, and VMPFC

Question 8

What are some effects of a lesion to the VmPFC (Ventromedial Prefrontal Frontal Cortex)?

Answer 8

Lose the ability to identify and avoid risky behaviors.

[Cannot gauge risk/benefit, eg the Iowa Gambling test. Also lose the autonomic reaction to risky behaviors, eg sweaty, nervous. Great poker face, bad poker player]

Question 9

What is the function of the VmPFC and the ventral striatum?

Answer 9

VMPFC and ventral striatum are (respectively) critical for generating and reinforcing predicitons about the risks and rewards associated with actions.

Question 10

What is the function of the insula?

Answer 10

The Insula constitutes primary olfactory, gustatory, and visceral sensory cortex. Links between insula, VMPFC, and amygdala relate these senses to emotion