Module 1: emotions and mood

Question 1

What components does the definition of emotions cover?

Answer 1

1) a physiological reaction to a stimulus, 2) a behavioral response, 3) a feeling, 4) influence cognitive processing, 5) can be triggered by emotionally salient stimuli, 6) unintentionality, 7) evolutionary purpose, and 8) a social and relational aspect: communication

Question 2

How are emotions and mood different?

Answer 2

Emotion: comprise many components, discrete
Mood: diffuse, longer-lasting subjective feelings

Question 3

What are the three categorize of emotions?

Answer 3

Basic, complex and dimensional theories of emotion

Question 4

Describe the difference between basic and complex emotions.

Answer 4

Basic: corresponding to facial expression
Complex: combination of basic, some socially and culturally learned

Question 5

Explain the concept of universal facial expressions.

Answer 5

Ekman: showed pics of american actors expressing different emotions to a tribe in New Guinea –> they recognized the emotions
Americans also recognized the emotional expressions of the tribe

Question 6

What are the 6 basic emotions according to Ekman?

Answer 6

happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise

Question 7

What are some other candidate emotions beside the 6 basic suggested by Ekman?

Answer 7

shame, pride, grief

Question 8

Describe dimensional theories of emotion.

Answer 8

Categorizing emotion is a framework for scientific assessment of emotion - not universal truths

Question 9

What are some examples of emotion generation theories?

Answer 9

James-Lange, Cannon and Bard, Lazarus, and Singerand Schachter

Question 10

Briefly describe the differences between the four emotion generation theories,

Answer 10

James-Lange: emotions are feed-back responses of physiological responses
Cannon and Bard: parallel processing, one does not cause the other
Lazarus: risk-benefit appraisal
Singerand Schachter: hierical order from physiological response –> subjective emotional feeling

Question 11

What are some theories of basic emotions?

Question 12

What are emotional biases?

Answer 12

Attention, encoding and memory

Question 13

Give an exampel of how attention is a bias.

Answer 13

Emotional triggers –> higher attention
Negative info is prioritized

Question 14

Give an exampel of how memory is a bias.

Answer 14

Negative emotions (danger) does not make the memory more accurate, but more vivid

Question 15

What is a FlashBulb memory?

Answer 15

A very vivid memory (almost a flash of pictures), e.g., where was I when 9/11 happened, small reliability

Question 16

What brain region is behind the voluntary down-regulation of emotions, and how is this region different in BIP patients?

Answer 16

The dorsal prefrontal cortex
In BIP: hypoactive - patients cannot down-reg emotions properly

Question 17

Describe the role of the amygdala in implicit emotional learning.

Answer 17

The amygdala seems to play a role in implicit eversive learning: a patient with amygdala impairment does not show a physiological response prior to “fear response”, but remembers the trigger

Question 18

Describe what role the amygdala seems to play in the processing of emotional facial expression.

Answer 18

the amygdala contributes to direct visual attention to the eyes when encountering any facial expression

Question 19

Describe what role the insula seems to play in the processing of emotional facial expression.

Answer 19

Insula may play a broad role in associating cognitive and affective process
(valence and arousal are decreased in patients with impaired insula)

Question 20

Give some examples of physiological measures of emotional processing.

Answer 20

fMRI, HR, electrodermal activity (sweat), respiratory rate, subjective emotional response

Question 21

Give some examples of behavioral measures of emotional processing.

Answer 21

Fear conditioning and emotional attentional blink

Question 22

Describe widely used tests in decision making.

Answer 22

Loss aversion: will you take the bet if the win/lose is equal?
Iowa gambling task: sunjects learn to draw cards from decks that lead to monetary gains, and avoid losses

Question 23

Define general maturational trends in grey and white matter structure during childhood and adolescence.

Answer 23

From grey to white: apperent cortical thickness related to age

Question 24

Describe general sex differences in brain maturation

Answer 24

Overall cortical volume: males have larger volumes
Age of peak: females peak earlier (in FA and MD)

Question 25

Characterize how the grey and white matter matures in a regional specific pattern.

Answer 25

Visual, sensory and motor cortices mature earlier than higher order association cortices

Question 26

Describe the major concepts of the hierarchical development model

Answer 26

Moves from more “bottom-up” driven to become better at “top-down” control

Question 27

Describe how adolescents differ from children and adults in their activity pattern during emotional face tasks

Answer 27

Overactive amygdala
Shows a shift from positive to negative functional coupling with age

Question 28

What may explain the impulsive behavior of adolescents?

Answer 28

OVeractive amygdala and ventral striatum –> “approach” motivation bias towards stimuli that gives a reward

Question 29

What does more negative coupled ventromedial PFC-amygdala reflect?

Answer 29

Better amygdala habituation

Question 30

What does higher anxiety trait reflect?

Answer 30

Poorer amygdala habituation