Lecture8

Question 1

List the 3 components of emotion

Answer 1

Physiological changes (not always conscious), subjective feeling & associated behaviour (e.g. facial expression)

Question 2

Define emotion

Answer 2

A feeling state characterised by physiological arousal, expressive behaviours, & a cognitive interpretation

Question 3

What are some physiological components of emotion?; Expressive components?;
Cognitive components?

Answer 3

Heart rate, breathing & sweating;
Facial expressions, body movements & voice;
Beliefs & appraisals

Question 4

What learnt factors depend on how we control our emotions?

Answer 4

Personality, past history/culture, situational factors & mood

Question 5

How does the autonomic system deal with states of arousal?

Answer 5

Sympathetic - fight or flight; parasympathetic - calming down; enteric - visceral (butterflies/sick to stomach)

Question 6

The sympathetic nervous system dilates...; 
Inhibits...; 
Increases...; 
Stimulates...; 
Secretes...; 
Relaxes...

Answer 6

Pupils; 
Salivation, digestion & genitals; 
Respiration & heartbeat; 
Glucose release; 
Adrenaline & noradrenaline; 
Bladder

Question 7

The parasympathetic system constricts…;
Stimulates…;
Slows…;
Contracts…

Answer 7

Pupils;
Salivation, gall bladder, digestion & genitals;
Respiration & heartbeat;
Bladder

Question 8

What physiological responses are typically measured on a polygraph?

Answer 8

Galvanic skin response; pulse; blood pressure; breathing & fidgeting

Question 9

What is the theory about the order of emotions & responses according to folk psychology?

Answer 9

Perceived event (stimulus) leads to emotional experience (e.g. fear response) which leads to physiological & behavioural changes (autonomic arousal)

Question 10

What is the James-Lange theory about the order of emotions & responses?

Answer 10

Perceived event (stimulus) leads to physiological behaviour (arousal) which leads to emotional experience (e.g. conscious feeling of fear);

Question 11

In regards to the James-Lange theory, William James says…;
Carl Lange says…

Answer 11

Physiological arousal causes emotion;

Physiological arousal IS the emotion

Question 12

What are some problems with the James-Lange view?

Answer 12

Visceral responses are not specific enough to determine particular emotions, they would take too long to cause emotion, they can occur without emotions & emotions can occur without visceral responses

Question 13

How did Maranon find that visceral responses can occur without emotions?;
How did Cannon find the same thing?

Answer 13

Injecting subjects with adrenaline produced physiological responses but no clear emotional states;
Disconnecting viscera from CNS by removing SNS in cats has no effect on emotional expressions

Question 14

What is the Facial Feedback-hypothesis about emotions?; What’s an example of the strong version of this?;
What’s the weak version?

Answer 14

Expressing a particular emotion puts us into the corresponding emotional state (similar to James-Lange); First you laugh, then you infer “that’s funny” or “I’m happy”;
Facial expression modulates emotion (i.e. fake it till you make it)

Question 15

How was the Facial Feedback-hypothesis tested?

Answer 15

By asking participants to contract/relax facial muscles important for expressing emotion, then testing intensity of emotion when corresponding muscle groups are active

Question 16

Why did Duchenne stimulate facial muscles to create grotesque facial expressions?;
What marks a Duchenne smile?

Answer 16

To find out which muscle groups are involved in genuine expressions;
Lines around & under the eyes, raised cheeks, naso-labial folds & corners of mouth pulled back & up

Question 17

What is the Corrugator muscle involved in?
What does the Orbicularis Oculi muscle control?
The Zygomaticus muscle?

Answer 17

Frowning;
The eye when smiling;
The mouth when smiling

Question 18

How does a facial EMG measure expression?;
Where do positive emotions increase activity?;
Where do negative emotions increase activity?

Answer 18

Electrodes placed on the face record activity in various muscles;
In the cheeks;
In forehead & brow areas

Question 19

What evidence did Hennenlotter et al. find about botox injections?

Answer 19

Injecting botox into frown muscles decreases activity in brain regions that process emotions (amygdala & brain stem)

Question 20

What did Havas et al. find about botox injections on subjects’ reading?

Answer 20

Slow reading of angry & sad sentences but not happy sentences

Question 21

Physiological states & expressions / behaviour can modulate emotions, so it’s worth trying to…

Answer 21

Fake it until you make it

Question 22

What is the Cannon-Bard theory about the order of emotions & responses?;
Therefore, emotions are…

Answer 22

Perceived event (stimulus) processed in subcortical brain activity leading to both physiological & behavioural responses (autonomic arousal) & emotional experience (conscious feeling); 
Separate from ANS response & behaviour

Question 23

Give an example of step 1 of Cannon-Bard’s Thalamic / Hypothalamic theory of emotion

Answer 23

Dog growls (stimulus); thalamus is activated & sends simultaneous messages to cerebral cortex (I am afraid - emotion) & SNS (My heart is beating fast, I’m breathing hard - bodily changes)

Question 24

What’s step 2 of the Cannon-Bard theory?;

Answer 24

Hypothalamus evaluates the emotional relevance of environmental events

Question 25

What's step 3A of the Cannon-Bard theory? | Step 3B?

Answer 25

Cortex conscious experience - projections from hypothalamus to cortex mediate conscious experience; Brain stem emotional response

Question 26

Beginning at the olfactory bulb, name the main areas of the Limbic System in a clockwise direction

Answer 26

Cingulate gyrus, thalamus, fornix, hypothalamus, mamillary body, hippocampus, amygdala

Question 27

What progress was made with rhesus monkeys when assessing emotional behaviours?

Answer 27

Fear conditioning

Question 28

In classical conditioning, US is...; UR is...; CS is...; CR is...

Answer 28

Unconditioned Stimulus (hardwired); Unconditioned Response; Conditioned Stimulus (learnt); Conditioned Response

Question 29

What evidence reveals that the amygdala is important for fear learning?; What do fMRI scans show?

Answer 29

Damage to the lateral nucleus of the amygdala interferes with fear conditioning; Amygdala activity changes during conditioning, & these correlate with thalamus activity but not cortical activity

Question 30

What brain region is important for differential conditioning?; What about contextual conditioning?

Answer 30

Cortex; | Hippocampus

Question 31

How is context conditioning applied?

Answer 31

No distinct CS, environment serves as CS; context A: CS-US, context B: CS (2 different environments)

Question 32

What's an example of differential conditioning?

Answer 32

Animal receives electro shock upon tone in box A but not in box B

Question 33

Explain LeDoux's Low Road to emotional processing

Answer 33

Sensory input to the thalamus straight to amygdala - activation of emotions before cognitive processing (unconscious); amygdala controls physiological & behavioural emotional response - no cortex involved

Question 34

Explain LeDoux's High Road to emotional processing

Answer 34

Sensory impulses sent from the thalamus to the neocortex for cognitive processing (perceptions & interpretations), then activation of emotions in amygdala (modulated response)

Question 35

From the thalamus, the amygdala signals a threat which triggers the hypothalamus. What is the process of neurotransmitter activity from this point?; What occurs simultaneously?

Answer 35

Hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) which activates the pituitary gland & secretes adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) & cortisol is released (stress hormone); Activation of adrenal gland, which releases adrenaline / noradrenaline (increasing sympathetic response)

Question 36

What did Feinstein et al. find when testing patients with focal bilateral amygdala lesions for fear?;

Answer 36

No conditioning to aversive stimuli, failure to recognise fearful faces & absence of fear when exposed to fear-provoking stimuli

Question 37

How did Feinstein et al. test for fear responses with 3 amygdala lesioned patients?; What were the results?; What did the controls show differently?

Answer 37

The 3 patients & 12 controls inhaled CO2; Fear or panic was triggered in all 3 patients & physiological response was the same or heightened; Anticipatory fear response (they could predict)

Question 38

As well as for conditioning to fear, the amygdala is important for...; What isn't it necessary for?; Who's theory can't explain fear response?; Brain structures that by-pass the amygdala can also...

Answer 38

Anticipation or detection of threat; Experiencing emotions (fear/panic); LeDoux's; Evoke fear

Question 39

Provide 4 explanations as to why extinction is not "passive forgetting"

Answer 39

Spontaneous recovery (emergence of conditioned fear some time after extinction); renewal (reappears in a different context); reinstatement (emergence after encounter with CS alone after successful extinction); rapid reacquisition (faster than learning)

Question 40

What happens with active suppression of fear responses during extinction (learning)?

Answer 40

CS becomes ambiguous

Question 41

What happens at a neural level with associative learning?

Answer 41

Changing connection strengths between neurons (synaptic weights); changing wiring between neurons (plasticity)

Question 42

According to Hebbian's learning rule, what is Synaptic strength?; What is plasticity?

Answer 42

A synapse between 2 neurons is strengthened when the neurons on either side of the synapse (input & output) have highly correlated outputs (both activated or both inhibited); What fires together wires together - neurogenesis & changes in wiring of synaptic connections

Question 43

Name 2 ways of changing synaptic weights

Answer 43

Coincident activity in pre- & post-synaptic neuron strengthens connection; modulatory interneuron can strengthen connections when activity coincides with pre-synaptic neuron

Question 44

What do neuromodulators do?; What are 2 important neuromodulators?; They don’t necessarily depolarize a cell directly but they...

Answer 44

Modulate firing rates (sensitivity) of enervated neurons; Dopamine & Serotonin; Increase their sensitivity & have longer-lasting effects than neurotransmitters

Question 45

Extinction is an active process involving what?; | What doesn’t happen during extinction?

Answer 45

Changes in synaptic weights (similar to learning); | True unlearning of fear response (it’s latently there)

Question 46

Give 2 examples of research approaches to assess detection of threat vs. threat learning

Answer 46

Detection: visual search task; learning: resistance to extinction (conditioning to threatening vs. non-threatening CS+, then compare extinction for threat CS+ & non-threat CS+)

Question 47

What did Seligman & Maier find in their Learned Helplessness study with dogs?; What did Hiroto find in the equivalent human experiment with loud noise?

Answer 47

Even though the dogs could escape electric shocks by jumping over a partition, 80% of the group 2 dogs never jumped; The same results - those in uncontrollable noise condition didn’t learn to move the lever & stop the noise

Question 48

Learned helplessness is also known as...; How is this linked to depression?; What is learned helplessness an example of?

Answer 48

Retardation of learning, learning transfer or consequences of learning; From learning that outcomes are uncontrollable; How past learning / experience directly influences how a situation is perceived & how this perception leads to certain emotions / mood states

Question 49

Give examples of how attributions determine the development of helplessness

Answer 49

Stable v.s unstable attributions > chronic vs. acute helplessness; global vs. specific attributions > broad vs. narrow helplessness; internal vs. external attributions > lower vs. higher self-esteem

Question 50

Explain the Schachter & Singer 2-factor theory of emotion

Answer 50

Event (stimulus) > physiological changes (autonomic arousal) > cognitive labels (appraisal) > emotional experience & behaviour (conscious feeling)

Question 51

In the 2-factor theory, what equals emotion?; Emotion only occurs if...; How can this be tested?

Answer 51

Arousal + cognition; Body is aroused; a reason for arousal is located; the labeling of arousal determines emotion; arousal without cognition leads to no emotion; By making people attach a wrong cognitive label (misattribution) to arousal state

Question 52

In the experiment where participants were injected with Epinephrine (adrenaline), & either informed or misinformed about arousal effects followed by friendly or angry confederate, what were the results?

Answer 52

In euphoric condition, misinformed were happiest & informed the least happiest or angriest; informed group attributed arousal to the drug & were least effected by the context

Question 53

In Dutton & Aron's misattribution experiment, where participants crossed either an unsafe or safe bridge, followed by a survey with attractive experimenter, who were more likely to call her & ask for a date?; How could this be interpreted?

Answer 53

Those who crossed the unsafe bridge (50%) with only 12.5% of those who crossed the safe bridge; People crossing the scary bridge misattributed arousal (fear) to the experimenter (attraction)

Question 54

Attributions can determine...; What can arise from misattribution?; What's a similar theory to this?

Answer 54

The emotions we form or experience; Misguided emotions; Cognitive appraisal theory (cognition causes arousal)

Question 55

Explain the order of different theories of emotion over history

Answer 55

Focus on ANS, visceral responses & behaviour; brain structure & localisation (thalamus, hypothalamus & amygdala); conditioning to alter emotional responses to particular stimuli (& extinction); cognitive appraisal in defining emotions (or arousal)