Week Twelve Flashcards
mood
diffuse, longlasting emotional states.
emotion
immediate responses to specific object or situation.
the neural basis of love
- Bartels & Zeki have performed a number of fMRI studies looking at “the neural basis of love”. -
- Romantic and maternal love activate a set of overlapping brain structures including cingulate cortex, insula, hippocampus and basal ganglia.
There are deactivations of areas including TPJ (thought to be involved in “mind reading”).
- Romantic and maternal love activate a set of overlapping brain structures including cingulate cortex, insula, hippocampus and basal ganglia.
neurotransmitters
- At synapses, neurons often secrete chemical signals called neurotransmitters that diffuse a short distance to bind to receptors on the target cell.
- Neurotransmitters play a role in sensation, memory, cognition, and movement
neurohormones
Neurohormones are a class of hormones that originate from neurons in the brain and diffuse through the bloodstream
The endocrine and nervous systems act individually and together in regulating physiology
- Signals from the nervous system initiate and regulate endocrine signals
the hypothalamus and emotion
- The hypothalamus receives information from the nervous system and initiates responses through the endocrine system
pituitary gland and emotion
- Attached to the hypothalamus is the pituitary gland composed of the posterior pituitary and anterior pituitary
posterior pituitary and emotion
- The posterior pituitary stores and secretes hormones that are made in the hypothalamus
anterior pituitary and emotion
- The anterior pituitary makes and releases hormones under regulation of the hypothalamus.
oxytocin
milk production, male ejaculation, etc.
insel & Young
Performed experiments on two breeds of voles
- Prairie vole (monogamous, pair bond after mating).
- Montane vole (promiscuous).
A. Prairie voles: greater expression of OT receptors in nucleus acumbens and prelimbic cortex
B. Differential behaviour patterns of female voles following mating
C. Blocking of partner preference in female prairie voles by OT antagonist infusions
Bertels & Zeki
Activation during both romantic and maternal love includes a set of structures that are rich in oxytocin receptor sites. Caudate, globus pallidus, hippocampus, hypothalamus, putamen, substantia nigra etc etc
Many of these sites are also implicated in cocaine induced euphoria (eg. Mandeville et al, 2011).
dimensions of emotion
- Arousal ○ High arousal = excited, tense. ○ Low= calm, lethargic - Valence ○ Positive= elated, contented ○ Negative= sad, gloomy. -
theories of emotion
- James-lange
- Cannon-bard
two-factor
- Cannon-bard
saussignan’s experiement
Asked participants to hold a pencil in their mouth either using their teeth, in a smile, or by holding it between their lips, preventing them from smiling.
Found that alteration of facial expressions can lead to changes in the subjective experience of emotions.
cannon-bard
Visceral changes occur too slowly to precede emotional experience.
thus, emotion happens first and the body responds to this emotion.
evolutionary perspective on emotion
Charles Darwin.
- Emotions are functional (fight or flight) and confer survival advantage. - Facial signals are universal. - Facial signals of emotion are not arbitrary. - Emotions are categorical: i.e. they have evolved in response to distinct evolutionary pressures and fulfill different functions.
ekman
Claimed that facial expressions are universal and the 7 basic expressions consist of happiness, surprise, contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, anger.
In general westerners are better at recognizing emotion.
susskind et al.
- Believed that emotions are non-arbitrary.
- Fear and disgust may perform opposite functions in terms of promoting versus inhibiting sensory input.
- Fear configuration allows greater visual field coverage and is associated with faster eye-movements than neural and disgust is lower than baseline.
Fearful configuration allows faster/greater air intake than baseline and disgust is lower than the baseline.
fear and the amygdala
- Adolphs found that amygdala lesions selectively impaired fear recognition.
- Calder, Lawrence & Young conducted imaging studies looking at fear conditioning and viewing facial expressions of fear both activate the amygdala.
- It is suggested that the amygdala is involved in both the experience and recognition of fear.
Lesions in monkeys found that when the amygdala was damaged they showed less fear.
blind sighted patients and fear
- In blind sighted patients, threat related faces evoke peripheral indices of fear/threat related response even when the patient has not consciously perceived the facial expression.
- Therefore suggested that there is a fast subcortical processing stream that is specific for the detection of threat related materials.
insula
- The bilateral insulae is activated by disgusted faces.
- Calder, Lawrence and Young and suggested that the special role of the insula is the recognition of disgust.
- Overlapping region of the anterior insula is activated whole smelling disgusting odorant and whilst viewing the facially signalled disgust of others whilst smelling odorants.
facial feedback hypothesis
evidence supports James-Lange theory.
Creaky Bridge experiment
- evidence for the two-factor theory.
Dutton & Aron.
Woman would stop passing men on the creaky bridge to ask them questions.
Same woman did the same thing but on a safe bridge.
There is more arousal on the creaky bridge and the men interpret this to be arousal to her rather than the envoronment. Thus, she recieved more calls from the men on the creaky bridge.
olympic athlete facial expressions
found that blind athletes still performed normal facial expressions. Revealled that expressions are things that are innate rather than learned.
(Matsumoto & Willingham, 2009).
