Unit 13 - The Emotional Brain Flashcards
What is meant by emotions? What is their primary function? What type of inherent value do they have?
A state associated with stimuli that are rewarding (i.e., that one works to obtain) or punishing (i.e., that one works to avoid)
Guiding us on how to behave - what to avoid and what to seek out
Inherent survival value
What is mentalizing?
The process of inferring or attributing mental states to others
What is meant by mirroring?
The process of sharing the emotions or mental states of others
What are some aspects of emotions that can be focused on to study emotions?
Their subjective nature, bodily responses, or behavioural consequences
What is a mood and how does it differ from an emotion?
An emotional state that is extended over time (e.g., anxiety is a mood while fear is an emotion)
Emotions, on the other hand, are transient
What is meant by emotions having a hedonic value?
That they are subjectively liked or disliked
What is meant by emotions having a particular “feeling state”?
That they cause certain internal bodily responses, such as sweating, heart rate, or hormone secretion
What are emotional expressions? What could be some functions of these expressions?
Emotional expressions are external motor outcomes in the face and body caused by emotions
They may prepare the organism and/or send signals to other organisms
What did Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud agree on regarding human emotions?
That they possess continuity with their animal counterparts
What aspect of emotions did Darwin mostly focus on and what did he believe about this aspect?
Expressions
That they are innate (do not have to be learned), and conserved across species
Do expressions have any functional origins? Exemplify
Yes, they do.
For instance, fear increases visual field and nasal volume, while disgust decreases nasal volume, avoiding contaminants.
What did Freud divide human minds into? Explain each of the three divisions.
The id, ego and superego
Id concerned with representing our primitive urges, including our basic emotional needs for sex, food, warmth, and so on (belong to unconscious mind)
The ego is the conscious mind
The super-ego represents our cultural norms and aspirations
What is the James-Lange theory? What does it imply about the order of emotions? What is true and what is false about this theory?
The theory that our self-perception of bodily changes produces emotional experience (e.g., one being sad because one is crying)
That changes in bodily state occur before the emotional experience, rather than the other way around
Bodily experiences do not create emotions but they can enhance conscious emotional experiences
What is the Cannon-Bard theory? What does this theory imply? Which brain part is considered the centrepiece of emotions by this theory? What is this body part’s role in the theory?
Theory centred on the hypothalamus’ role in emotions in which bodily responses occur after the emotion itself
That bodily feedback can not account for the differences in emotion
The hypothalamus
Receiving and evaluated sensory inputs in terms of emotional content, and sending signals to autonomic system (to induce bodily feelings) and to cortex (to give rise to conscious experience of emotion)
What is the Papez circuit? What parts of the brain did this circuit contain? What originated in the circuit?
A limbic-based circuit that was once believed to constitute a largely undifferentiated “emotional” brain
Regions of the cingulate cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and thalamus
Feeling of emotions
Why is the theory of the Papez circuit no longer endorsed?
Some regions of it are no longer considered to carry out emotional-related functions (e.g., hippocampus and hypothalamus)
Different regions related to emotions perform different emotion-related functions (e.g., relating to fear versus disgust) rather than all regions being the same
What are basic emotions? What is an alternative approach to it?
Categories of emotions are thought to be universal, with distinct biological bases in evolution and neural substrates.
Different emotion categories are built from core processes like autonomic responses, approach/avoidance reactions, and beliefs, suggesting emotions are not natural kinds.
What are seen as the 6 basic emotions? What are some ways of discovering such basic emotions?
happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, fear, and surprise
universal facial expressions, specific neural bases, evolutionary reasons, automatic occurrence
What are some drawbacks of the basic emotion theory?
Not the case that each basic emotion has unique set of brain regions/networks
Some emotions satisfy some requirements for being basic, but not others
What is an alternative theory related to the term “core affect”? What does this theory state about facial expressions?
All emotions arise from a core affect system organized along two dimensions: pleasant-unpleasant and high-low arousal.
Different emotion categories are constructed by how they engage with the core affect system and the type of information linked outside this system. They are also shaped by experience rather than being innate.
What is another theory, this time related to the dimensions of reward and punishment, their presence/absence, and their intensity?
States that different types of emotion emerge by considering whether a reward or punishment is applied, and whether a reward is taken away or a punishment is taken away
Context also important (e.g., social or not)
What does an appraisal of an emotion involve? How is it related to the theory of basic emotions? Give an example
An evaluation of both the content and the context
Since some emotions could be seen as constructed from a basic emotion plus a non-emotional cognitive appraisal
Same basic emotion being appraised as shame or guilt depending on context
What are moral emotions? What does their existence imply? What areas of the brain do such emotions involve?
Emotions related to one’s behavior towards others or others’ behavior towards oneself or others.
Innate or culturally accepted benchmarks to evaluate actions.
Regions linked to both emotion (amygdala, insula) and cognitive appraisal (orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortices, STS).
What is the amygdala? What type of memories is it important for?
Part of the limbic system implicated in learning the emotional value of stimuli (e.g., in fear conditioning)
Emotional memories
What is the Kluver-Bucy syndrome in monkeys? Damage to which brain part causes this syndrome? What is it explained in terms of?
Unusual tameness and emotional blunting, tendency to examine objects with the mouth, dietary changes
Bilateral amygdala and temporal lesions
The monkeys losing their learned emotional value
What type of emotion conditioning is the amygdala highly connected to? Does damage to the amygdala prevent conditioning? Does it remove already existing conditioning? Is this the case for all types of stimuli?
Fear conditioning:
Damage prevents further fear conditioning and removes previously acquired fear conditioning.
The amygdala’s role in fear conditioning applies only to initially neutral stimuli, not to innately scary ones.
What is skin conductance response (SCR)? What is this correlated to?
Changes in electrical conductivity on a person’s skin, triggered by certain stimuli (e.g., emotional or familiar stimuli)
Amygdala activation
