the social and emotional brain (1) Flashcards
What are the key brain regions involved in emotion and social information processing?
The key brain regions involved include the amygdala, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and ventral striatum.
Define emotions are the role they play in human behaviour.
Emotions are states associated with stimuli that are either rewarding or punishing, guiding behavior by signaling what to avoid or seek (inherent survival or conditioning) and help with social decision making.
Describe Capgras syndrome and its implications for emotional processing.
Capgras syndrome involves a belief that loved ones have been replaced by identical imposters. It illustrates a disconnection between face recognition and emotional processing parts of the brain (amygdala + other parts of limbic system)
Decreased SCR response compared to controls to familiar people
What is the role of the amygdala in fear conditioning, and how is it demonstrated in research?
Fear centre in temporal lobes that plays a key role in learning and storing the emotional value of stimuli, as shown in fear conditioning studies where damage or lesions to the amygdala impair fear response learning.
This is only true for learnt stimuli, natural fear stimuli still elicits fear response even with amygdala damage.
Outline what research has shown us about the amygdala and fear conditioning.
Rats fear conditioned - meaningless stim (e.g a bell) acquire fear-inducing properties
Amygdala lesion before learning - association not made
Amygdala lesion after learning - animals forget the conditioned response and objects lose emotional value
Explain the double dissociation between the amygdala and hippocampus in fear processing.
Patients with amygdala damage = no conditioned SCR, but can recall the association and describe it
Hippocampal damage (amnesia) = SCR present, but can’t recall association
Suggests that components of the association are stored like this: amygdala is responsible for conditioned fear response. Hippocampus responsible for declarative memory of the conditioned fear response.
How does the amygdala contribute to recognizing fear in others, and what evidence supports this?
Bilateral amygdala damage impairs the recognition of fear expressions in others’ faces. Functional MRI studies show different parts of the amygdala activated for fear (left) whilst other emotions elicit activity elsewhere
demonstrates the social value of its function
What are ‘fast’ routes to the amygdala and how do they differ from ‘slow’ routes? What evidence is there that these exist?
Fast routes (thalamus - amygdala) do not require conscious awareness (unlike slow routes for more detailed processing (visual thalamus - sensory - prefrontal - amygdala)
essential for threat detection and rapid fear responses
Evidence includes activation in response to fearful faces in patients with visual cortex damage, subliminal presentation of phobic images elicit SCR in ppt even if they report not seeing them
fMRI - amygdala activated by fearful spatial expressions even for patients with visual cortex damage
Why have some psychologists named the amygdala the fear ‘hub’ instead of the fear ‘centre’ of the fear network?
Amygdala is a ‘hub’ which leads to enhanced activity of regions involved in the fear circuit (rather than creating fear itself) - visual cortex, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate (involved in preparing bodily responses), and orbitofrontal cortex (evaluating context), affects autonomic system to generate fight or flight response
Other than fear, what evidence is that that the amygdala is involved in other types of emotional processing?
Involved in punishment and reward - positive associations (Baxter and Murray research found activity when monkeys reacted to a positively conditioned association)
Involved in key social skills
- Kluver-Bucy syndrome in monkeys = bilateral lesion causes objects to lose learnt emotional values, which leads to less social skills and less fear response to things they should be afraid of e.g do not fear alpha, tameness, emotional blunting etc
Discuss the role of the insula in emotional processing, including its involvement in disgust and interoception.
The insula is involved in processing bodily feelings associated with emotions like disgust (actual and moral) in others and ourselves and, interoception (monitoring internal bodily states, can be conscious e.g pain or unconscious)
How does the function of the insula support the James-Lange theory of emotion?
Insula involved with interoception - bodily changes plat an important role to how we experience emotions and the characteristics we contribute to certain emotions
What functions are associated with the orbitofrontal cortex, and how is its activity related to reversal learning?
The orbitofrontal cortex computes the current value of stimuli, dictating their rewarding or punishing nature within a context, and important for social interactions, new rules and regulating emotions.
Flexibly changes to adjust the stimuli’s current value, meaning it plays a role in reversal learning/extinction
Damage = difficulty in reversal learning and socially inappropriate behaviour
What evidence is there to demonstrate the OFC’s processing of reward and punishement, amd social stimuli?
Small (punishment)
Initially chocolate was rewarding, and participants wanted to have it = activity in the medial regions of the OFC = pleasant, reward
Then chocolate became less pleasant, and participants were less motivated to eat it - activity in the lateral regions of the OFC = unpleasant, punishment
Rolls (Social)
Lateral orbitofrontal cortex activity when instead of an expected smile participants are presented with an angry face
Explain the role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
The ACC evaluates the benefits and costs of actions, processing motivation, processing bodily signals that characterise emotions, and processing pain.
