What are the six basic emotions that are all universally recognized?
- Anger
- Fear
- Disgust
- Surprise
- Happiness
- Sadness
What is emotion?
- Inferred behaviour state
- Affect - conscious subjective feeling about a stimulus
What are the four components of emotion?
- Physiology (CNS, ANS, hormones)
- Distinctive motor behaviour (tone of voice, expression)
- Self-reported cognition
- Unconscious behaviour (cognitive decisions that we are unaware of)
What are the brain circuits for emotion?
- The limbic system (amygdala and prefrontal cortex especially important)
- Amygdala receives input from all sensory systems (multimodal cells, sensitive to threatening/dangerous stimuli)
What are the candidate structures in emotional behaviour?
- Multiple neural systems for emotional stimuli
- Sensory systems for species specific behaviour may be separate
What are the major effects of prefrontal or amygdala lesions on social behaviour in nonhumans?
- Reduced social interaction
- Loss of social dominance
- Inappropriate social interaction
- Altered social preference
- Reduced affect
- Reduced vocalizations
What are two neuropsychological theories of emotion?
- Somatic marker hypothesis
- Cognitive-emotional interactions
What is the somatic marker hypothesis?
- When confronted with stimulus or biological importance, the brain and body change
- Reductions in body lead to reduced intensity of emotion
- Emotion is fundamental to survival
- Emotion is necessary for rational decisions
What are cognitive-emotional interactions?
- Emotion enhances survival and is interrelated with cognition
- Uses fear conditioning as a model system
- Circuits in the amygdala interact with cortical circuits to influence affective behaviour
What are ways that the amygdala may “know” that a stimulus is dangerous?
- Genetic (rats born in lab show fear of owls, primates show intense fear of snakes on first encounter, neurons in amygdalae of primates evolved sensitivity to negative facial expressions)
- Learnt (learn from past experience)
- Circuits in amygdala interact with cortical circuits to influence affective behaviour
- Context is important
- Prior experiences
- Orbital and medial prefrontal regions (connections with amygdala, play significant role in formation of thoughts about fearful stimuli)
What are the neuropsychological theories of emotion?
- Cognitive asymmetry and emotion
- Right hemisphere more engages in automatic components of emotion (generates feelings)
- Left hemisphere plays a role in the cognitive control of emotion (interprets emotion)
What is the evidence for asymmetry in emotional processing with respect to production of emotional behaviour?
- Left hemisphere lesions lead to flattened mood (appear depressed, language difficulties)
- Frontal lobe lesions reduce facial expressions
- Left frontal lesions decrease talking
- Right frontal lesions increase talking
What is the evidence for asymmetry in emotional processing with respect to interpretation of emotional behaviour?
- Right hemisphere lesions produce deficits in comprehension and judgement of emotion
- Right frontal lobe lesions produce impairments in understanding and using humour
- Right frontal lobe and temporal lobe lesions produce impairments on facial expression tests (effects may depend on emotion examined)
What is the evidence for asymmetry in emotional processing with respect to bilateral amygdala lesions?
- Impaired at recognizing negative expressions
- Not at recognizing happy faces
What is the evidence for asymmetry in emotional processing with respect to unilateral frontal-lobe lesions and right temporal or parietal lesions?
-Impaired at matching negative but not positive faces
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The Temporal Lobe32
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Cerebral Asymmetry34
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Language30
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Emotion15
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Neocortical Function6
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The Occipital Lobe19
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The Parietal Lobes19
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Organization of the Motor System19
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Spatial Behaviour29
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Learning and Memory46
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Brain Development and Plasticity26
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Learning Disabilities19
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Plasticity, Recovery, and Rehabilitation of the Adult Brain25
