Lecture 9 - Emotional Memory Part 2 Flashcards
WATCH VIDEO on SLIDE 1
What is optegentics?
● Optogenetics: a technique that uses light to “turn on” or “turn off” neurons at precise times
● I will not test you on the technical details of “optogenetics,” but I want you to know the concept above and understand generally that neuroscientists can edit memories using this technique.
What is emotion?
● Emotion: a cluster of three distinct but interrelated sets of phenomena— physiological responses, overt behaviors, and conscious feelings—produced in response to a situation
These are all ways in which we measure how ppl feel about an event
give a summary of findings on Emotion and Memory
● Do all the findings fit together?
● We saw three types of studies/approaches, two that were “autobiographical” in that they involved sampling memories in the real world, and a third that was “laboratory- based”
all these experiments were about how emotion effects memory
The consistency measure, Ss were no
more consistent for the emotional event
than the neautral event
high accuracy for the central content but low accuraacy
for the peripheral content
Why do we remember emotional events better than neutral ones?
● Emotion affects: (Answer to this question is complex
- emotion affects memory in different stages)
○ Encoding
(emotion can affect the way we encode events
- such that emotion can change what we prioriitize (
this relates to the central peripheral idea) when we encode
a emotinal event our intential recourses get honed in in particualr details
(ex: staring at the teeth of the bear alot and not noticing what is
around us))
○ Consolidation
(Emotion can affect the way we consolidate memories
- condolidataion begins minutes and hours after an event
occurs and emotion through neural biological process can boost the consolidataion
of that material
- firming memory through the consolidation process)
○ Retrieval
(Emotion can bias what type of information we choose to retrive at a given time
- at a high state of stress it will bias the kinds of information we recall
^- when we are stressed we may have a bias of recalling stressful memories. If we are sad we may have a bias of retering sad memories)
What is encoding, consolidation, and retrieval?
○ Encodingàhow we “take in” information
○ Consolidationà how we lay down permanent/semi-permanent records of that information
○ Retrievalàhow we retrieve information
What is our Physiological Response: Autonomic Arousal?
Physiological Response: Autonomic Arousal
● Arousal (fight-or-flight response): a collection of bodily responses that prepare the body to face a threat
emotion can lead to a hightened arousal
In the image in the left we can see that the brain and spinal cord
are connected to the organs in our body
- this allows us to change the way the organs operate in a treatful event. Ex: increases in our heart rate
- ex: when we have chnges in our phsyioloigcal it can increase how much we may attention to our
environemt and we see decreses in non essential functions. When we need to survive, our digestiomn will
be less functional for instance
increases in:
- Blood pressure and heart rate
-Respiration
- Blood glucose level
- Pain suppression
- Perception and awareness
- Blood flow to large muscles in legs and arms
decreases in:
- Digestion
- Immune system function
- Sexual arousal
- Touch sensitivity
- Peripheral vision
- Growth
● The physiological components of arousal are mediated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS)
(ANS
- when there is a challenge or threat
our adrenal glands release a stress hormone
called epinphrine (adrenaline) )
● When there is a challenge or threat, the adrenal glands release stress hormones
○ Major stress hormones include epinephrine (also called adrenaline) and glucocorticoids (cortisol in humans and corticosterone in non-human animals)
○ Can strengthen memory encoding (may depend on how much is released)
(These stress hormones can strenghten encoding and memory
- may be factors such as how much of the stress hormone is being released that influence this process)
What do we know about Emotional Learning in the Brain: A hub region?
Emotional Learning in the Brain: A hub region
●Amygdala: an almond-shaped region, critical for:
○ Learning and expressing emotion
○ The emotional modulation of memory formation
○ Yet, it’s role in emotional learning and memory is debated.
■ Some argue that a better characterization is “salience” detector
(important for detecting salinet events in our enviornment, even ones that aren’t emotional. an emotional listenig stimuus is an exmaple of
a salient or something that is very bright in colour could also be
considered salinet)
where is context learned?
● The hippocampus projects to the amygdala, a region that works in tandem with the amygdala to trigger emotional responses and encode emotional memories
● The two regions might play different roles but scientists are still working this out!
the hippocmapus is part of a broader emptional network
- this region has bi directional connections with the amygdala. The hippcampus projects to
the amygdala and the amgdalaa projects back to the hippocampus
What do you know about the amygdala and the expression of emotional responses? LOOK AT THIS SLIDE 14
The Amygdala and Expression of Emotional Responses
● Lesions of the amygdala disrupt emotional memory
○ Human patients with bilateral amygdala damage often show deficits in
learning emotional responses
■ Here a “CS” (conditioned stimulus) could be a tone that was paired with a shock
Amygdala is very important for the memory representation of the CSUS pairing because you
do not get the conditioned response
all these studies involve fear conditioning
- where a conditioned stimulus like a tone
is conditioned with something like a shock
- we then see a conditioned respons
Patients or rodents with hippocampal damage ctually show an
intacted conditioned reponse. This means that you do not need
a functioning hippocampus to show a conditioned response
- hippocampal daamage rodenst will show a conditoned response
in comparison to the control group
However, when the amygdala is damaged you will show no
condotioned response. This is shown in humans and in rodents
- amygdala damage specifically removes the conditioned response
^- the memory of the CSUS pairing is no longer in existence
Hippocampal lesions in humans will abolish the episodic memory for the US-CS event!
Both the amygdalal and hippocampus aare very important for learning and memory
even though their roles may be slighlty different
- these regions are part of a broader network. many parts of the brain are active when
we are recalling an emotional memory
Hippocampal lesioned individuals do not
have an episodic memory of the USCS event
even though they have the conditioned reponse
- would not be able to say that they were in the experiment
cannot tell you that there was a tone and a shock even
though they will show the US-CS
Those with the amygdala lesioned patinets show the opposite
- they have the epiosodic memory amd know that the pairing occured
but they do not have the US-CS
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF DOUBLE DISSOSICATION
