Fear and Anxiety Flashcards
(38 cards)
1
Q
What does much of our emotional life involve?
A
- Basic processing by systems that are highly conserved in humans and other mammals
- Mechanisms that operate independently of conscious feelings. Also why humans can be terrible at attributing our fear response
2
Q
What three main components do emotions involve?
A
- Physiological responses
- Overt behaviours
- Conscious feelings
3
Q
What’s the function of emotions?
A
- Lends the body’s resources to respond to important situations which helps us survive
4
Q
What’s arousal?
A
- Collection of bodily responses that prepare the body to face a threat.
5
Q
What is there an increase in during arousal?
A
- Blood pressure, heart rate
- Respiration
- Blood glucose
- Pain suppression
- Blood flow to muscles
- Perception awareness
6
Q
What is there a decrease in during arousal?
A
- Digestion
- Immune function
- Growth
- Touch sensitivity
- Peripheral vision
- Sexual arousal
7
Q
How would you define normal or “state” anxiety?
A
- A response to acute situations (e.g., a midterm)
- Often involves hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, avoidance/escape (these help mount an appropriate response)
8
Q
How would you define pathological or “trait” anxiety?
A
- A persistent anxiety in the absence of a stressor (GAD, PTSD, etc.)
- Inappropriate response to a regular stressor
9
Q
What’s the James-Lange theory of emotion (1880s)?
A
- An emotional stimulus, which elicits a bodily response (arousal), which then leads to conscious emotional feelings
- Ex. See a bear > Jumps > Feel fear
10
Q
What’s a major caveat of the James-Lange theory of emotion? What was developed instead?
A
- Caveat: It doesn’t always work as it depends on context (ex. seeing a bear in the zoo wouldn’t scare you)
- The two-factor theory of emotions (1962) was developed instead
11
Q
How does the two-factor theory of emotion differ from the James-Lange theory of emotions?
A
- Compared to the James-Lange theory of emotions, there is a cognitive assessment component in the two-factor theory
- This allows for the context of the emotional stimulus to be evaluated which helps modulate the bodily response
12
Q
Why may there be a misattribution of arousal to either fear or excitement?
A
- The physiological response to both emotions is very similar
- Think of the study about the lady on the bridge asking for participants’ numbers. Got more responses from men on the bridge
13
Q
The fear response elicits what kind of physiological response?
A
- Increase in heart rate, increase in blood pressure, sweating, urination, defecation, cortisol and adrenaline release
14
Q
What are the three different behavioural responses in the fear response?
A
1) Flee (easiest)
2) Freezing (predator gets close)
3) Defensive threat/attack (often the last resort, must push an animal for ti=his to occur.
15
Q
Why do rats dislike an open field?
A
- It’s very brightly lit often, and rats feel a very high threat of predation
16
Q
What’s thigmotaxis?
A
- The motion or orientation of an organism in response to touch or a stimulus
- In an open field, a rat will often hang out near the edge of the wall if they are stressed
17
Q
What often gets measured in the open field test?
A
- Latency in the centre of the field
- Distance from the centre/periphery
- Entries into the centre/periphery
18
Q
How can the open field assay be adjusted to potentially change the behaviour?
A
- Can change the lighting
- Smell
- Size
- Shadow (will want to hang out in shadows if they are available)
- Impact of vocalization
- Square open fiedl versus round open field
19
Q
How does the elevated plus maze work?
A
- There are two walled arms and two open arms. In the open arms, they feel a high threat of predation
- Place an animal in the centre
- Will perform threat assessment, check out surroundings, and will often retreat into the closed arms (feel safer)
20
Q
What is being measured in the elevated plus maze?
A
- Duration of threat assessment
- Latency in closed vs. open arms
- Entries into closed vs. arms
21
Q
How does defensive burying work?
A
- An assessment that’s not as common
- The rat gets startled because of the shock delivered by the shock probe, and then will start burying the shock probe
- Will measure the latency of burying and the height of the mound
22
Q
What do the open field and the elevated plus maze have in common?
A
- Both are testing for response suppression as when your fearful, you’re not producing an action.
23
Q
How does defensive burying complement the open field and elevated plus maze?
A
- We can see a decrease in activity in the open field and in the open arms, but then can also assess for increased activity in the defensive burying
- This way we know if we are assessing fear
24
Q
What different brain regions are involved in a discrete neutral stimulus versus contextual cues?
A
- When an unconditional stimulus is paired with a discrete neutral stimulus = amygdala dependent
- When an unconditioned stimulus is paired with contextual cues = hippocampal dependent
25
In a fear conditioning paradigm, if an unconditioned stimulus was paired with a neutral stimulus and then the context was changed, how would that impact behaviour?
- The animal will still elicit freezing behaviour even if the context is changed
- Freezing is the most reliable measure
26
What did the Heuer & Reisberg (1990) study regarding emotional memory uncover?
- They read people either a neutral story or an emotional story
- When they assessed their recall of the story plot, it was uncovered that those who heard the emotional story had much better recall compared to those who heard the neutral story.
- Result: Emotions strengthen explicit memories
27
What's the general definition of the limbic system?
- A group of brain structures responsible for mediating emotion
- Emotion is a function of a number of structures acting in concert.
28
Which brain structure is critical in emotional processing? What does it translate to?
- The amygdala
- Greek for "almond"
- It is comprised of 10 subregions, each containing a slightly different function
29
What are the three major subregions of the amygdala that play a huge role in emotional processing?
- The lateral nuclues
- The central nucleus
- The basolateral nucleus
30
What are the inputs and outputs of the lateral nucleus?
- Inputs: The thalamus and the cortex
- Outputs: the basolateral nucleus and the central nucleus
31
What are the inputs and otuputs of the basolateral nucleus?
- Inputs: The lateral nucleus
- Outputs: The central nucleus and the cortex, basal ganglia, and hippocampus
32
What are the inputs and outputs if the central nucleus?
- Inputs: Lateral nucelus and the basolateral nucleus
- Outputs: Motor functions (freezing, startle), and the ANS (arousal, hormone release, which would impact the stress response)
33
What happens when we lesion the basolateral nucleus in rats and then test them in a fear conditioning paradigm?
- Because the basolateral nucleus was lesioned, we would also observe a decrease in outputs into the central nucleus, which would lead to a dampening in the freeze response
- General result: Lesions of the BLA reduce fear memory at remote and recent time points
34
Who were the three human patients who underwent surgery but then were assessed in a fear conditioning paradigm? WHat was the fear conditioning paradigm?
1) SM046 - Amygdala lesion
2) WC1606 - HPC lesion
3) RH1951 - Both AMY and HPC
- Fear paradigm - a sound of a loud boat horn was made eveytime a blue rectangle appeared on a screen. The skin conductance was measured.
35
What were the results of the patient fear conditioning study to assess the fear response across three different human patients?
- Controls: increase in skin conductance; understood there was a connection between the coloured slide and the boat horn
- SMO46: No change in skin conductance; understood there was a connection between the coloured slide and the boat horn
- WC1606: Increase in skin conductance; did not understand the connection between the coloured slide and the boat horn
- RH1951: No change in skin conductance; did not understand the connection between the coloured slide and the boat horn.
36
What's the purpose of having 2 inputs into the lateral nucleus, from the thalamus and the cortex?
- The 2 inputs aid in survival
- Upon an initial emotional stimulus, the thalamus is the first to quickly respond and deliver info to the lateral nucleus, albeit this info is very rough
- As bottom-up processing continues, once info reaches the cortex the interpretation of the info becomes more refined and then this new, more elegant info regarding the stimulus is transmitted to the lateral nucleus, which further informs the amygdala how to respond.
- The initial info from the thalamus quickly informs the limbic system whether immediate action should be taken.
37
What is it that the amygdala neurons are actually encoding?
- Conditioned emotional responses
- A conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus, and together they form an association
- They have to be close enough together in time.
- After enough pairings, the presentation of the conditioned stimulus is enough to induce LA neuron activity.
38
How do repeated pairings of the US and CS impact synaptic connectivity?
- It results in a strengthening of the connection
- The CS (ex. odour/tone) is eventually sufficient to alter the firing rate of the amygdala neuron (i.e., gets very strong)
- WIll observe a change in synaptic connectivity and weighting (i.e., associative learning)
