Neuronal mechanisms of emotion

Question 1

What are Emotions?

Answer 1

Largely automatic and unconscious
Behavioral and cognitive respones triggered by stimuli

Question 2

What are Feelings?

Answer 2

Subjective conscious perceptions of emotional responses

Question 3

Physiological changes associated with emotions?

Answer 3

Brain-> changes in arousal levels and cognitive functions (attention, memory)
Body-> endocrine, autonomic and muskoskeletal responses
—> stress hormones, blood pressure, sweating ,erections
—> skeletal motorsystem: freezing, fight or flight or particular facial expressions

Question 4

How can you show, that emotional responses are conserved through evolution?

Answer 4

Give a Baby bitter and sweet compounds

Question 5

Why have feelings emerged in Evolution?

Answer 5

Directly displaying the advantageousness of a situation as a felt experience facilitates learning. Feelings serve as addidional regulators of behaviour.

Question 6

What is affective Neuroscience and who fathered it?

Answer 6

Is concerned with neural bases of Emotion. Fathered by Charles Darwin with “The expression of Emotions in man and animals”. And Wiliam James “What is Emotion”

Question 7

What did Wiliam James propose?

Answer 7

proposed peripheral feedback theory (feeling of fear is a consequence of emotion)-> we are afraid because we run
Together with Carl lange, developed James-Lange theory

Question 8

What did James Papez find out?

Answer 8

Sensory information from Thalamus sent to hypothalamus. Descending connections to brainstem and Spinal cord create emotional responses
Ascending connections to cerebral cortex create feelings
Proposed a central neural circuit of emotion (Papez circuit)

Question 9

What is the tripartile architecture of the brain?

Answer 9

1. Evolutionarily ancient brain “reptilian brain”-> primitive Emotions
2. Old mammalian brain-> augments reptilian emotional responses
3. new Mammalian brain-> top down control over emotional responses

Question 10

What role does the amygdala play in Emotional circuits?

Answer 10

In an experiment where monkeys learn an instrumental response (like pressing a button) to avoid an electrical shock, Monkey with lesions in the amygdala had a significant impairment in learning.