Emotion and the Brain

• What is affect?

  an umbrella term for mood and emotions
• What is an emotion?

  intense and has a short duration
• What is a mood?

  a background feeling longer in duration
• Why study facial expressions?

  facial expression may provide meaningful insight into cognitive-affective states
• What did Ekman claim the 7 basic emotions are?

  anger, disgust, fear, surprise, happiness, sadness, and contempt
• Ekman said these emotions are..

  universal and do not need to be learned
• Why is Ekmans approach criticised for not being universal?

  Gendron tested emotions in Himba tribe, Namibia and found only happy and fear were consistently recognised, but not sad, disgust, anger
• Why is Ekamns approach criticised for simplifying human emotion?

  Cowen and Keltner identified 27 different emotions but a bit fuzzy
• Why is Ekmans approach criticised for not being replicable?

  Sorenson failed to replicate when using free labelling, raised questions such as could language influence emotion
• Why may Ekman not be trustworthy?

  funded by DARPA who were more interested in using this for defence purposes, so did not try to replicate in other conidtions like Sorenson
• What tool did Ekman develop for lie detection?

  METT- when people attempt to mask, emotions consistent with their “actual state” will appear briefly as some facial muscles are difficult to control, been used in border control agencies, not consisitent so can be dangerous
• What is the complete specialisation position on emotions?

  says there are different centres in the brain that each deal with a single basic emotion
• What is the complete dispersion position on emotions?

  says there is a single network that deals with all basic emotions
• What is the imtermediate position on emotions?

  • combines the previous 2 postitions
  • most popular IP says there is a set of brain areas involved in processing all emotions (Papez, 1937)
• What is the Papez circuit?

  A neural circuit involved in the regulation of emotions and memory, it is an intermediate position on emotions
• What parts of the brain are involved in the Papez cicuit?

  Hippocampus, fornix, mammillary bodies, anterior thalamic nuclei, cingulate gyrus, cingulum, parahippocampal region
• Why was the Papez circuit criticised?

  • Not all areas in the circuit play a major role in emotion processing
  • E.g., mammillary bodies and hippocampus more important for long-term memory in general
  • also doesnt include areas that do play as major role in emotion processing (amydala etc)
• What is thebproblem with human research on emotions?

  • no neuroimaging method has high spatial resolution, high temporal resolution, whole-brain coverage
  • animal research might be able to fill some gaps
• What is cued fear conditioning?

  Learning process associating a neutral stimulus (tone) with a fearful event (shock) to elicit a fear response in rats
• What brain areas are assocaited with fear?

  • the amydala- different parts of the amygdala has different fear effects when stimulated
  • also the thalamus and primary sensory cortices
• What is fear extinction?

  learning to not have a fear response, not the same as forgetting
• How was fear extinction found in rats?

  when the CS is presented repeatedly without the aversive stimulus, CR eventually disappears and has become extinguished
• What is the problem with fear extinction?

  • memory of CS and CR is not completely erased
  • indicates the amygdala (fear response), hippocampus(memory of association) and PFC (attention) are all involved in extinction
• What is emotion regulation-cognitive reappraisal?

  Cognitive reappraisal is a strategy to reinterpret the meaning of a situation to change its emotional impact
• What did Oschner et al (2002) find when pps were asked to reappraise negative images?

  Decreased activation in amygdala and increased activation in PFC
• What did Vergallito (2018) find in his brain stimulation study?

  rVLPFC would regulate negative affect in preventing dangerous situations regardless of intensity
• Anterior Insula (AI), Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and PFC (lateral and medial) are important for...

  • voluntary control over amygdala activation
  • Interoceptive – heartbeat, arousal etc.
  • Exteroceptive – environmental changes
• What are the implications of emotion regulation-cognitive reappraisal?

  • important for MHD, e.g.g can reappraise anxiousness as excitement
  • In everyday life, you could use cognitive appraisal strategies; Presentations. Public Speaking, Social communication