Week 7: Emotion Flashcards
What are emotions?
Valenced responses to external stimuli and/or internal representations that….
- Involve changes in multiple systems
- Are distinct from moods
- Can be learned responses
- Appraisal of stimuli in terms of current goals
What are the 3 components of emotion?
- A physiological reaction (typically unconscious, automatic process)
- A behavioural response (eg. fighting/fleeing)
- A feeling (conscious, subjective feeling)
What are the basic emotions?
Anger Fear Sadness Enjoyment Disgust Surprise
These are universal, innate and short-lasting
What about complex emotions?
These are longer lasting that complex emotions with no universal facial expressions.
eg. Parental love, jealousy
These can be socially or culturally learned
What is the evolutionary role of emotion?
Emotions evolve from behaviours that indicate what an animal is likely to do next (eg. baring teeth is likely to mean an animal is likely to attack)
Enhances communicative function
What is the role of the medial prefrontal lobes in emotion?
Can be seen through the case of phineas gage who had dramatic changes in personality.
Reconstructions shows damage to the medial prefrontal lobes
What is the James-Lange theory of emotion?
According to this theory, witnessing an external stimulus leads to a physiological response. Your emotional reaction depends on how you interpret those physical reactions.
What is a limitation of the james-lange theory?
People with impaired autonomic responses can still experience emotion - which if following that theory there would be no autonomic response to trigger emotion
What is the cannon-bard theory of emotion?
A stimulus triggers both autonomic/skeletal response and emotion in parallel
What is the appraisal theory of emotion?
Emotion is the result of the appraisal of risk/benefit
Perception of stimulus - cognitive appraisal of stimulus - emotion - response
What is the Singer-Schacter theory of emotion?
Blend of the james lange and appraisal theories of emotion
Perception of a stimulus - general physiological reaction - cognition - emotion
Explain the sham rage findings in cats
Decorticated (removed cortex) cats exhibit extreme and unfocussed aggressive responses = sham rage
What brain structure was found to be required for sham rage to occur in these decorticated cats? and what does this mean?
The hypothalamus
Needed for the expression of aggression
What does bilateral damage to the amygdala cause?
A rare neurological disorder - Kluver-Bucy syndrome
What are the major symptoms of kluver-bucy syndrome?
Lack of fear!!
Urge to put objects in mouth, memory loss, hypersexuality, emotional blunting
Explain the HPA axis
The amygdala: detects things that are dangerous in the environment
Prefrontal cortex: regulates the stress response by making things seem less scary
Hypothalamus: wakes up the pituitary gland
Pituitary: hormones from here tell the adrenal gland to release cortisol
Cortisol: travels through the blood and tells other body parts to react to stress
What if we just observe someone else’s emotions, do we get emotional?
Brain activity for imagined, experienced or observed emotion is very similar
What are the main points that have been found when studying emotion
- Brain activity associated with each human emotion is diffuse
- There is usually motor and sensory regional activity along with an emotional response
What is urbach-wiethe disease? (SM case study)
Deficits in identifying/reproducing fearful emotional expressions of others
Rare neurological disorder resulting in atrophy in amygdala
This is not a conceptual fear - could describe situations in which would elicit fear and said she hated snakes and spiders but would not elicit any fear if she saw them
When rating facial expressions - rated as less intense
What do damages to the amygdala mean for fear conditioning
Lesions to amygdala block fear conditioning but not the unconditioned response to an aversive stimulus
What is the low road and high road with the amygdala and fear conditioning?
Low road (be fast)
- fast subcortical pathway via thalamus
- rapid detection of threat
High road (be sure)
- slower cortical pathway
- complex analysis of stimuli
What is the most critical region of the amygdala in conditioned fear?
The lateral nucleus
- typically suppressed by the prefrontal cortex