Emotion (L9)

Question 1

What are the 3 components of emotion?

Answer 1

1. Cognition
2. Feeling
3. Action

Question 2

Numan + Woodside

Answer 2

Proposed that an emotion is an internal process that modifies the way an organism responds to external stimuli

Question 3

James-Lange theory

Answer 3

• An event causes than action that derives a feeling of emotion
• Emotions are embodied (dependent on bodily responses)
• Predicts that people with weak autonomic responses will feel less emotion

Question 4

James-Lange theory: weak autonomic response

Answer 4

FOR

• People with paralysis are unable to instigate fight or flight but feel emotion at the same level as before their injury
• Patients with autonomic failure have little difficulty identifying emotion in others but feel their emotions less intensively
• People with botox take longer to read unhappy sentences as they can’t make the emotional response associated
• Patients with locked-in syndrome have problems recognising other’s emotions

AGAINST

• People with somatosensory cortex damage have normal physiological responses to emotional music
• People with damage to prefrontal cortex have weak autonomic responses but normal subjective responses

Question 5

James-Lange theory: increased autonomic response

Answer 5

• Spontaneous rapid breathing leads to worry about suffocation and panic attacks (Klein)
• Subjects holding a pen in their teeth (using the smile muscles) rated a comic strip as funnier than those holding the pen in their lips (using the frown muscles)

Question 6

Mobius syndrome

Answer 6

• Congenital disorder is which patients exhibit a mask-like expression
• Caused by paralysis of VI and VIIth cranial nerves
• No impairment in recognising facial affects, but impairment in face recognition

Question 7

Cannon-bard theory

Answer 7

• Emotional stimuli simultaneously trigger autonomic response and emotional experience in the brain

FOR

• ANS responds too slowly to account for rapid onset of emotional experience
• If non-emotional stimuli (eg. temp) cause the same pattern of autonomic activity, why don’t we feel afraid when we have a fever?
• Not enough unique patterns of autonomic activity to represent the array of unique emotional experience we have

Question 8

Schacter-Singer theory

Answer 8

• Different emotions may reflect different interpretations of a single pattern of activity based on environmental context
• Stimuli trigger a physiological state which leads to the interpretation of the event that leads to the experience of an emotion

Question 9

Disgust

Answer 9

• Anterior insula (gustatory cortex) contains neurons that respond to pleasant and unpleasant tastes
• Basal ganglia is also involved in feelings of disgust
• Patient with damage to the left insula and basal ganglia who was impaired in recognising disgust in facial expression and in experiencing disgust himself (Calder et al.)

Question 10

Testosterone

Answer 10

• Male hormone
• Linked to aggression
• Individuals injected with testosterone had delayed recognition of anger when shown images

Question 11

Serotonin

Answer 11

• Low levels linked to aggresion
• Levels can be altered by diet
• Synthesised from tryptophan (high conc of other amino acids blocks the amount of tryptophan that can cross BBB via channel)
• Individuals with less active forms of the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase (converts tryptophan to serotonin) are more aggressive
• The brain releases serotonin during aggressive behaviour and this may magnify the behavioural response

Question 12

Fear and anxiety

Answer 12

• Controlled by amygdala which projects to the hypothalamus and prefrontal cortex
• Whalen et al. argue that the pattern of activation in the amygdala is more about detecting ambiguity in the face (activates when comparing fearful/angry and happy faces with neutral faces)

Question 13

Startle response

Answer 13

• Animal is presented with a loud noise and a startle response is recorded
• A light is paired with a shock repeatedly
• Then a light precedes the loud noise and increases the startle response
• In rats with amygdala damage there is a startle reflex but no increase from the light stimulus

Question 14

Toxoplamsa Gondii

Answer 14

• A parasite that lives and breeds in feline hosts
• The host cat excretes the parasite into the soil = rat ingests faeces and becomes infected = the parasite damages the rat’s amygdala = rat shows no fear when approaching cats = cat eats the rat = cycle repeats

Question 15

Urbach-Wiethe disease

Answer 15

• Atrophy of the amygdala caused by calcium accumulation
• Patient SM only reports excitement when shown clips from scary movies. Her fearlessness became a danger to her as she doesn’t recognise dangerous situations