Neural Dynamics of Mindful Emotion Flashcards
What is an emotion?
Short lived and intense
Response to contact with object or social
What are Feelings?
Patterns that emerge over time shaped by predominant emotion
Milder, Abstract and non-refernetial
What is a mood?
Milder than emotion, but longer lasting
result of fixating on a feeling, difficult to identify cause
What are the 6 basic emotions?
Eckman thought he found universal emotions via facial expressions.
Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Happiness, Fear, Surprise
What is the relationship between emotions and body?
They have a direct impact on each other
What was Antonio Damiso’s hypotheses on emotion?
Somatic Marker hypotheses of emotions:
The main tenants of the hypothesis are
emotions are biologically instantiated processes with complicated chemical and neural patterns.
They are part of homeostatic regulation rooted in
reward punishment mechanism,
at the service of global regulatory function of the organism, such as biological
survival.
The neural machinery of emotions occupies a restricted ensemble of subcortical regions, starting
around the level of brainstem.
The same brain structures both regulate and represent the body states.
This neural machinery tends to be engaged automatically, resulting in easily detectable or subtle changes in body,
brain and mind states.
How does Damiso’s hypotheses work?
Visceral sensations lead to feelings of either pleasant or unpleasant we then decide if we like or dislike it, deciding to avoid and aversion or pleasure and approach, we will then evaluate the the narratives which inform the worries or anxieties.
CBT successfully has disrupted this, mindfulness of bodily sensations via MBCT or MBSR can do the same
What are the types of emotional processing?
Emotional reactivity:
mindless emoting and acting out
Emotional regulation:
Reappraisal
Suppression
Mindfulness
What are the neural pathways involved in emotion?
Perception is received by the Thalamus, from there the direct path is to the Amygdala the slower path is to the cortex, like PFC to regulate emotions via cognitive process.
What areas of the brain are involved in emotions?
Brainstem, ventral striatum and thalamus receive information.
Amygdala and anterior ínsula decide if it is pleasant or unpleasant, dangerous or benign.
vmPFC, OFC, Ventral AC: Evaluation of biological threats, relevance to current agenda. Decision to cool down amygdala or ramp up
DPFC Dorsal AC: Give meaning and context to emotion. Language repapriasal or perspectives via DMPFC
What did Ochsner et al find in their study?
When having participants either attend to or reappraise negative and neutral photos.
Reapriasal reduced affect to almost base level.
Reappraisal also reduced BOLD signal in the Amygdala
Lateral and medial PFC are engaged during reapriasal and downregulate activity on orbital cortex and amygdala
What did Goldin et al find about emotions?
The Lateral PFC has differing time curves depending on wether we are suppressing or reapraising.
In suppression there is little demand, but this increases over time and also increases the amygdala and the insula
What did Banks et al find regarding OFC and the amygdala?
That higher order processes can be used to calm the amygdala if they are convincing enough
How does the location of the cortex effect the role it plays on emotions via the amygdala?
The more ventral areas are closer to the amygdala and better suited to ramping up or suppressing amygdala function.
The more dorsal areas have more capacity for reappraisal as they are closer to the language areas. Particularly the lateral prefrontal cortex, Medial prefrontal cortex and Orbitofrontal.
What did Chisea find in his review?
Those training in mindfulness showed both top down and Botton up regulation, but experienced meditators showed only bottom up control.
