Task 5 Flashcards
What kinds of responses are emotions made up of?
- Physiological responses – Changes in heart rate, increased perspiration and respiration.
- Overt behaviors – Facial expressions, vocal tone and posture.
- Conscious feelings – Subjective experiences of sadness, happiness, and so on.
What happens during the fight or flight response?
In a frightful situation, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) releases
stress hormones (adrenaline) and glucocorticoids (cortisol), which “control the Fight-or-
Flight response”.
Increase in: Respiration, heart-rate, blood pressure, blood glucose, stress hormones
Energy flow to: Large muscle groups, pain suppression, reflexes, perception/awareness
Energy taken from: Digestion, reproduction, immune system, touch receptors
What is the James-Lange theory of emotion?
- James-Lange theory of emotion – Conscious feelings of emotion depends on what our body is telling us “We are afraid because we run”.
What is the modern emotional theory?
- Emotional stimuli give rise to bodily responses, which, interpreted in certain context, give rise to conscious feelings of emotion.
How do emotions influence storage and retrieval of memories?
Encoding
- experiment w/ story: traumatic story was remembered better
Retrieval
- experiment w/ recall of autobiographical memory: participant could remember things better if they were congruent with their mood (emotion as a memory cue)
- Flashbulb memories
- features are very vivid but incomplete and can contain inaccurate details
What types of learning of emotional responses are there?
- Conditioned Emotional Responses: fast, long-lasting and hard to extinguish
- Conditioned Avoidance: example of instrumental conditioning
- Learned Helplessness
How did the experiment which showed prediction of danger in rats look like?
Before pairing with a US, a tone CS evokes a mild increase in blood pressure (a) and a brief period of freezing (b). This is an unlearned startle response. After, the tone CS is paired with a foot-shock US. After pairing, the tone CS evokes a strong increase in blood pressure (a) and extended freezing (b). These are conditioned emotional responses, indicating that the rat has learned CS-US association.
How did the experiment which showed rat’s learning of avoiding danger look like?
-> Rats are shocked when going into dark section
X Rat remembers earlier unpleasant experience -> freeze as soon as it is placed in experimental apparatus -> CR to experimental context.
X Rat delays before it crosses into dark area and will not spend much time there (avoidance) -> Instrumental conditioning.
- Instrumental conditioning – Stimulus S (= apparatus) -> Response R (= entering dark area) -> Consequence C (= getting shock).
What brain systems have special roles in emotional learning and in interpreting the context and monitoring display of emotions?
Emotional learning: Structures of limbic system (incl. thalamus, cingulate cortex, hypothamalus, amygdala)
Interpreting: Frontal cortex
What is the amygdala important for? Name the three nuclei! (there are 10)
- learned emotional responses
- emotional modulation of memory storage and retrieval
Lateral nucleus
– Primary entry point for sensory information into amygdala – This information comes from thalamus (= sensory gateway to brain) and cortex.
Central nucleus
Projects out of amygdala to:
a. ANS – Driving expression of physiological responses (arousal, release of stress hormones).
b. Motor centers – Driving expression of behavioral responses (freezing, startle).
Basolateral nucleus
– Projects to cortex, basal ganglia and hippocampus (memory storage areas). It also provides pathway by which emotion modulates memory storage and retrieval in those structures.
What can be seen in patients with bilateral amygdala damage?
Disrupted ability to learn and display new emotional responses
- Experiment of skin conductance response: Patient with bilateral amygdala damage responds to US, but cannot learn emotional response to CS.
- > Amygdala lesions damage central nucleus, disrupting ability to express learned fear response, because the damage disrupts major output pathway to ANS and motor centers, that drive freezing response.
What two pathways are there concerning the amygdala and emotional learning?
Direct pathway – Faster (12ms) but conveys less detail -> Fast and rough. (thalamus -> amygdala)
Indirect pathway – Slower (19ms) but involvement of cortex allows finer discrimination of stimulus details -> Slow but accurate. (thalamus -> cortex -> amygdala)