Week 6: Emotion Flashcards
Monogamy
Associated with differences in oxytocin binding
Methods in affective neuroscience
Neuroimaging, brain stimulation, electrophysiology, lesion studies, behavioural experiments
Neuroimaging
PET, fMRI
PET
Analyzing decay of radioactive tracer isotope
fMRI
Analyzing hemodynamic responses
Brain stimulation
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation
Electrophysiology
EEG, MEG, single unit recordings of a neuron, microstimulation
Darwin and emotion
Compares sketches/photos of emotions in animals and humans, they are homogenous, a set of basic emotions are present throughout species
Ekman
6 basic emotions that are universally recognizable: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise
Basic emotion theory
Proposed a limited set of basic emotions that are universal, biologically inherited and have unique physiological and neural profiles that distinguish them from one another (not true!)
Why is basic emotion theory not correct?
Fundamental processes of emotion are shared across brain regions, brain does not have one distinct system for each emotion
Dual systems account
Withdrawal system, approach system
Withdrawal system
Causes you to avoid aversive stimuli, fear, disgust, amygdala, anterior insula
Approach system
Causes you to approach desirable goals, happiness, enthusiasm, pride, reward system
Example that amygdala is a central structure in the withdrawal system
Kluver-bucy syndrome, patient SM
Kluver-bucy syndrome
Monkeys when bilateral amygdala is removed, loss of emotional reactivity, hypersexuality, hyperorality, disturbed social behaviour, failing in social standing
Patient SM
Bilateral amygdala damage, impairment of recognition of fearful facial expressions, impaired fear processing, recognition of other basic emotions not impaired
Amygdala in healthy humans
Responds to viewing fearful faces
Amygdala and fear conditioning
Freezing behaviour does not occur in animals with amygdala damage, also visual fear conditioning
Is the amygdala only relevant for fear?
No! Also active for experience and perception of other emotions (experience of disgust, perception of anger)
Evidence that cognitive and affective neuroscience overlap?
Encoding of memory is enhanced during emotional experience, emotional stimuli draw attention
Rewards
Outcomes of desires and goals
Reward system
Consist of prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbent, ventral tegmental area, activity coheres with the value of an item during decision-making
Reward system, nucleus accumbens
Activation increases with the anticipation of monetary rewards
Reward system, VTA
Dopaminergic neurons fire for prediction errors regarding reward
Reward system, ventral striatum
Predicts how bad something is going to be, provides a relative coding for expected outcomes
Orbitofrontal cortex / vMPFC
Reward, experience and perception of disgust, experience of fear, perception of anger
Reward (brain)
Processed in the orbitofrontal cortex,
Evidence that reward is processes in the orbitofrontal cortex
increase in activation in response to food during hunger, for watching attractive faces, aesthetic value of art,
Psychological constructivism
Emotions are psychological events that emerge out of more basic psychological operations that are not specific to emotions, basic emotions are categories that are formed by basic processes of the brain
Emotion regulation (ER)
Relies on the interaction between emotions and cognition, refers to the implementation of a conscious or non-conscious goal to start, stop of otherwise modulate the trajectory of an emotion
Types of emotion regulation
Antecedent-focused, response focused
Antecedent-focused emotion regulation
Situation selection (avoiding negative events), situation modification (modifying situations to receive a different outcome), attention deployment (use distraction), cognitive change or reappraisal (think differently)
Response focused emotion regulation
Response modulation/suppression (stop crying)
Brain regions active during emotion regulation
VMPFC, VLPFC, DLPFC, amygdala
Why are cognitive control regions important during emotion regulation?
To keep our behaviour on track towards accomplishing certain goals
Limitations of fMRI
The BOLD signal does not have a meaningful zero point, all measured BOLD signals are relative, interpretability largely depends on experimental design, reversed inference
