W6&7 - emotions ✅ Flashcards
What are the 3 components of an emotional response?
- Hormonal: automatic responses via brain mechanisms
- Autonomic: facillitate behaviours by providing energy (effects of hormone)
- Behavioural: muscle movements
appropriate for the situation
=> all three components are organised by different neural systems
What is the role of the Amygdala in fear processing?
- Lateral Nucleus (LA)
– Receive inputs from other brain regions
– LA also sends internal and some
external projections - Basal Nucleus (B)
– Sends internal and limited external projections - Central Nucleus (CE)
– MAIN OUTPUT NUCLEUS
– Sends projection to various brain regions
=> damage to central nucleus of amygdala reduces or abolishes a wide range of emotional responses
Which part of amygdala is responsible for conditioning responses?
- Lateral Nucleus (LA)
- Neurons in the LA communicate with neurons in the Central Nucleus (CE)
- CE communicates with the regions responsible for the conditioned emotional response
Explain the mechanism behind extinction of associated responses?
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)
Evidence:
- stimulation of vmPFC inhibit conditioned response
- extinction training activates vmPFC neurons
- lesions to the vmPFC impair extinction
Application: treating phobias -> activation of vmPFC predict exposure therapy outcomes
What are the 3 theories of emotion?
- James – Lange:
- stimulus -> physiological responses -> feelings of emotion
- evidence for: Hohman’s spinal cord injury interview -> overall decrease in feelings, greater decrease with more extensive disruption
- evidence against: cat with severed nerves in autonomic NS still be able to demonstrate anger, fear, pleasure - Cannon – Bard:
- stimulus -> thalamus activity -> physiological responses + feelings of emotion
- first to link emotional pathway to the brain - Schachter – Singer:
- stimulus -> physiological responses -> cognitive label -> feelings of emotion
- first to link emotion pathway to cognition
- evidence: emotions are result of interaction between physiological arousal (epinephrine-induced reaction) and cognitive interpretation (happy or angry situation)
What are the common treatments for anxiety/depression?
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Anti-depressants
-> Evidence: amygdala and insula activity during emotion perception is reduced by both treatments => predict anxiety and depression symptom improvement
=> HOWEVER, each treatment targets different neurocognitive mechanisms
What is the Process model of emotion regulation?
- built upon modal model of emotion
- treats each step in the emotion-generative process as a potential target for regulation
- 5 families of strategies for each step -> strategies are selected & monitored
What are the different components of empathy?
- Affective: Feeling what another person is feeling through recognition, being sensitive and having an appropriate affective response
=> lacking with vmPFC impairment
=> brain regions: inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) & posterior dorsal medial frontal gyrus (PDMFG) - Cognitive: Recognizing and understanding that another person is feeling something
different to what you are feeling
=> lacking with inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) impairment
=> brain regions: supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and anterior dorsal medial frontal gyrus (ADMFG)
What is the role of empathy & sex difference in empathy and its development?
Function: prosocial motivation
Measurement: Empathy Components Questionnaire (ECQ)
Results:
- Sex difference:
- significant for all components of affective empathy (F > M)
- small difference for cognitive empathy - Empathy development:
- significantly higher empathy in girls
- cognitive empathy increases for both
- reduce affective empathy for boys
What are the evidence that support and against expression of emotion is innate?
FOR:
- Cross-cultural research: emotion expressions are same in cultures that have not been exposed to each other
- Blind people study: expression is innate and no need learning by imitation
- Emotional vocalisation from different cultural groups:
- better same-group identification
- negative emotions are recognised across cultures BUT
- positive emotions are cultural specific
AGAINST:
Difference in emotional intensity between cultures (non-universal)
What is meant by the simulationist hypothesis?
Hypothesis: emotion recognition involves simulation of emotion that we are viewing
Evidence:
- people tend to imitate facial expressions to assist emotion recognition
- if the facial perception region in somatosensory cortex is disturbed by TMS -> impairs emotion expression matching
Neural explanation for Sex differences in emotion processing?
- sex difference in how two hemispheres process facial info
- M: right-sided asymmetry
- F: bilateral or left-sided activity
How can the brain recognise emotions?
(brain scan for activation)
- engagement between amygdala and the neural networks in all emotions
- left-hemisphere amygdala and insula dominance, except for some of vmPFC (right side but category specific)
Developmental differences in emotion processing?
- Fast facial emotion recognition developement
- Prolonged vocal/auditory modality for emotion recognition development
Hormonal influences on emotion?
Oxytocin:
- Improvement of the recognition of fearful and happy facial expressions by oxytocin in young adults with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).
- importance: recognition of fear is thought to inhibit aggression
Testosterone & Cortisol:
- recognition accuracy was significantly higher for audio-visual than either auditory or visual
- positive association between testosterone and recognition accuracy & between cortisol and reaction time
- significant but small effect size
