Task 5 emotional learning and memory

Question 1

Emotion

Answer 1

A cluster of three distinct but interrelated sets of phenomena – physiological responses, overt behaviours (e.g. facial expressions), and conscious feelings – produced in response to an affecting situation

Question 2

Fear response

Answer 2

A cluster of physiological, motor, and conscious reactions that accompany the emotion of fear

Question 3

Universal emotions

Answer 3

happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise

• Japanese citizens are more likely to mask their emotions compared to Americans

Question 4

Arousal

Answer 4

A collection of bodily functions that prepare the body to face a threat also know as flight or fight response

Question 5

Autonomic nervous system (ANS)

Answer 5

A structure of nerves that control internal organs and glands. Mediating arousal/flight or fight response
 Can act without conscious control

Question 6

Stress Hormone

Answer 6

A hormone that is released in response to signals from the autonomic nervous system and helps mediate the flight or fight response
• Epinephrine
• Glucocorticoids chief is cortisol

Question 7

Stress

Answer 7

Any stimulus that causes bodily arousal and the release of hormones

Question 8

James-Lange theory of emotions

Answer 8

states that conscious feelings of emotion occur when the mind senses the physiologic responses associated with fear or some other kind of arousal

Question 9

Somatic theories of emotion

Answer 9

Theories based on the central premise that physiological responses to stimuli come first and these determine or induce emotions
 Smiling elicits the corresponding emotion

Question 10

Cannon-Bard theory of emotion

Answer 10

The theory the conscious emotions stimulate appropriate behaviours and psychological responses

Question 11

Two factor theory of emotions

Answer 11

The theory that a combination of cognitive appraisal and perception of biological changes together determines our experiences of emotions
o Cognitive appraisal helps to determine which emotions is needed when arousal is the same (seeing a bear or your girlfriend)
Combines operant and classical conditioning

Question 12

Piloerection

Answer 12

A fear response in mammals in which body hair stands on end, making the animal look bigger and more threatening than this

Question 13

Frontal cortex

Answer 13

Important for reading and expressing appropriate emotions, lesions may show a general disruption of emotion and mood, which can be manifested as social withdrawal and loss of normal emotional display
o Helps to balance between too much and too less emotions
o Mediates the signal from amygdala whether it is appropriate in a certain situation or not (seeing a bear in a zoo or in the woods)

Question 14

Conditioned emotional response

Answer 14

The emotional reaction to an CS (is quickly learned)

o Can be very long lasting and hart to extinguish

Question 15

Conditioned escape

Answer 15

An experiment design in which animals learn to make particular responses in order to escape from or terminate an aversive stimuli
o Operant conditioning: a discriminative stimulus SD evokes a behavioural response R, leading to an outcome O

Question 16

Conditioned avoidance

Answer 16

An experimental design in which animals learn to make particular responses to avoid or prevent exposure to an aversive stimulus
o Long lasting

Question 17

Cognitive expectancies

Answer 17

According to this view, animals learn the expected outcomes of responding and of not responding and then make a decision to respond or not based on a comparison between the two expected outcomes

Question 18

learned helplessness

Answer 18

A phenomenon in which exposure to an uncontrollable punisher teaches an expectation that response are ineffectual, which in turn reduces the motivation to attempt new avoidance responses

Question 19

Amygdala and emotions

Answer 19

• 10 different subregions or nuclei
• Amygdala might provide a strengthening signal for memory storage based on emotions
o Activity of Amygdala might provide cues for storing information as semantic or episodic
• Stimulation of the amygdala causes only mild emotion because the interpretation (two way model) is missing
• Important for conditioned emotional responses, lesions inhibit learning of new emotional responses

Question 20

Differences between sex in amygdala activation

Answer 20

in women, left amygdala activation during encoding predicts better memory later; in men, right amygdala activation predicts better memory later

Question 21

Lateral nucleus

Answer 21

primary entry point for sensory information in the amygdala, which arrives directly from the thalamus or indirectly over the cortex
o Conditioned emotional response is learned and stored in the lateral nucleus
o LTP occurs with conditioning/learning

Question 22

Central Nucleus

Answer 22

receives input from other amygdala nuclei and projects out of the amygdala nuclei to the automatic nervous system. driving expression of physiological responses such as arousal and release of stress hormones, and also to motor centres, driving expression of behavioural responses such as freezing and startle
o Signals other brain region to turn on fear responses
 Might encode other aspects of emotional learning, particularly when appetitive, or pleasant, rather than aversive, or unpleasant, stimuli are involved

Question 23

Basolateral nucleus

Answer 23

receives input from the lateral nucleus and projects to the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia and hippocampus providing a pathway by which the amygdala can modulate memory storage and retrieval in those structures

Question 24

Direct pathway

Answer 24

o One direct from thalamus to amygdala (fast and rough)
 Faster but less detail
 Allows us to react faster in life and death situations

Question 25

Indirect pathway

Answer 25

o One indirect from thalamus over cerebral cortex to amygdala (slow but accurate)
 Slower but the involvement of the cortex allows much finer discrimination of stimulus details
 Allows us to terminate the fear response if the stimulus is not dangerous after all

Question 26

Stress Hormones in memory storage

Answer 26

When epinephrine is released by the ANS, which was activated by the central nucleus, can’t pass the blood brain barrier, so it is translated to norepinephrine which is projected to the basolateral amygdala and activates it with rhythmic firing. This is at least in rats a good predictor how good information are remembered. May lead to facilitation of LTP in hippocampus and cortex

Question 27

Lesions to Hippocampus and amygdala

Answer 27

• When hippocampus is affected people couldn’t remember wat happened in the experiment but learned the CR when amygdala is damaged they understood the method of the experiment but they didn’t learned the CR. This is due to missing emotions provided by the Amygdala

Question 28

Systematic desensitization

Answer 28

Therapy for phobias in which successive approximations of the fear-evoking stimulus are presented while the patient learns to remain relaxed; eventually, even presentation of the stimulus itself does not elicit a fear reaction

Question 29

Extinction therapy

Answer 29

exposing the patient to cues that trigger his anxiety but doing so in the absence of danger. the purpose is to encourage extinction of the abnormally strong fear response

Question 30

VR as treatment for Phobia or PTSD

Answer 30

• Can serve as more easy variant of systematic desensitisation. E.g. you don’t have to let people in a plane you can just simulate the situation

Question 31

Optogenetics

Answer 31

A technique for causing specific cells (particularly neurons) to become sensitive to light, after which researchers can use light stimulation to turn those specific neurons on and off at will
o Virus deliver these genes that encode these rhodopsin

Question 32

Caged neurotransmitter (optogenetics)

Answer 32

chemically modified to remain inactive unless triggered by laser illumination (developed, so not natural)

Question 33

channelrhodopsin (optogenetics)

Answer 33

allows influx of positive ions in response to illumination with blue light to act as an on switch

Question 34

Halorhodopsin (optogenetics)

Answer 34

which triggers influx of negatively-charged chlorine ions in response to yellow light and thereby hyperpolarizes the cell, to act as an ‘off’ switch

Question 35

Mood congruency of memory

Answer 35

The principle that it is easier to retrieve memories that match our current mood or emotional state

Question 36

Flashbulb memories

Answer 36

A memory formed under conditions that seems especially vivid and long lasting
o Are not more accurate then episodic memories but we are more confident about them
o Every time we pull them in our mind we make them vulnerable and might add details that could fit but are not necessarily true

Question 37

Phobia

Answer 37

o Specific phobias: fear of particular objects or social situations
o Agoraphobia: fear of leaving home ore familiar (safe) areas, usually because of fear of having a panic attack
o Might arise through conditioning

Question 38

Posttraumatic stress disorder

Answer 38

A psychological syndrome that can develop after exposure to a horrific event (such as combat, rape, or natural disaster); symptoms include re-experiencing the event (through intrusive recollections, flashbacks, or nightmares), avoidance of reminders of the trauma, emotional numbing, and heightened anxiety.
o CS can be variety of stimuli related to the trauma
o it seems that some individuals have a smaller-than-average hippocampal volume, and this may predispose them to develop PTSD later
o show increased amygdala response to negative stimuli (predispose)