B&C Social Affective Neuroscience
Colleges.
Book: Emotion. pleasure and pain in the brain. H2, 5, 3, 6, 7, 4,
Chapter 2, A brief history
Socrates: described emotional responses as neithr bodily sensations nor bodily drives, but
pleasures and pains of the soul itself.
Aristotles: strikingly modern insigthts, he suggested that emotions had a function and that
they should not be seen separate from cognition. In his eyes emotions were evaluative
(comparable with modern appraisal theories).Developing proper experience of emotion was
just as important as developing good reasoning skills.
Epicurean: too much of a good thing can be bad and abstinence is desirable.
Stoics: emotions stemmed from false judgements.
Freud: very influential but his theories were unfalsifiable.
Modern psychology: the vast majority of brain function is unconscious, but not because it is
instinctual or repressed.
Basic emotions:
Darwin: meant his studies of the similarities between emotional expressions in all animals to
provide further evidence of continuity between species. It has been the inspiration for a
particularly influential theory of emotion known as the basic emotion approach.
Many theorist agree there are basic discrete emotion categories: fear, anger, sadness,
disgust and happiness. Basic emotion models assume that emotions are triggered by
external objects or events, and that each type of emotional trigger sets off a specific
biological response, which is unique to a particular emotion and common to each instance of
that emotion. Thus, each instance of an emotion has the same pattern of behavior, bodily
activation, facial expressions and some would go as far as to suggest experiences, so that
they are easily recognizable to people of all cultures.
William James: Bodily theory of emotions. Seperations of the sensory and motor system. His
conclusion: My thesis on the contrary is that our bodily changes follow directly the
PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of thee same changes as they occur IS
the emotion. SO: bodily changes are an integral part of the emotional response. He also
believed that emotion emerge from more general processes occurring in the motor and the
sensory centers of the brain.
Damasio: emotions as changes in both body and brain states in response to different stimuli.
These bodily changes (somatic markers) are relayed to the brain where they are
transformed into an emotion.
Appraisal theories (Aristotl.): assume that emotions are not triggered in a reflexive or
habitual way, but arise fgrom our interpr4etation of the situation.
, Arnold: emotion relate to our self to an object or stimulus. Emotions draw us towards or
turn us away from objects or situations according to our judgements. This idea is still very
much relevant today. Experiment: arousal bridge. Result: makes little sense in terms of basic
emotions because if they ar4e supposed to be innate and stereotyped responses, the
context should not alter which emotions is experienced.
Two factor theory: combination of previous theories. Experiment: with the injections. Two
very important observations:
1. Cognitive appraisal of a situation is an important part of an emotional response.
2. Expectation is important.
Behaviorists: Pavlov and Skinner. Behavior can be explained through operant learning
processes, and that any behavior could be altered if the correct punishment and reward
schedules could be devised or discovered.
Watson: showed that you can be conditioned to learn an emotional response to a stimulus
that naturally does not produce that emotion.
Constructionist theories: there are no basic emotions. Instead, emotions are built or
constructed from smaller psychological and physiological building blocks or components.
Emotion categories are learned through experience. These models look more of the mental
processes underlying each emotion.
- Component process model was a prominent model by Scherer. Emotions have five
components.
Cannon and Bard: ‘sham rage’ experiment. Result: suggested that the cortex must normally
serve to suppress or inhibit the underlying brain regions in which the emotions must reside.
Papez: Sensory information from outside the body must combine with sensations from
inside the body to give us our experience of emotions. Experiment with injecting rabies.
Result: 3 streams.
- Stream of thought: to the neocortex
- Stream of movement: to the striatum
- Stream of feeling: passing to hypothalamus.
MacLean: continued with idea of 3 streams or divisions. Neomammalian brain,
paleomammalian and reptilian brain. Limbic system as the emotional brain.
LeDoux: 2 brain pathways that mediate fear conditioning:
1. Direct path from thalamus to amygdala: raw sensory info travels directly to the
emotion centers to offer a very rapid signal of threat.
2. Thalamus via the cortex to the amygdala: cognitive appraisal.
So two types of response: instinctive and cognitive.
Chapter 3, Individual emotions.
Fear:
Colleges.
Book: Emotion. pleasure and pain in the brain. H2, 5, 3, 6, 7, 4,
Chapter 2, A brief history
Socrates: described emotional responses as neithr bodily sensations nor bodily drives, but
pleasures and pains of the soul itself.
Aristotles: strikingly modern insigthts, he suggested that emotions had a function and that
they should not be seen separate from cognition. In his eyes emotions were evaluative
(comparable with modern appraisal theories).Developing proper experience of emotion was
just as important as developing good reasoning skills.
Epicurean: too much of a good thing can be bad and abstinence is desirable.
Stoics: emotions stemmed from false judgements.
Freud: very influential but his theories were unfalsifiable.
Modern psychology: the vast majority of brain function is unconscious, but not because it is
instinctual or repressed.
Basic emotions:
Darwin: meant his studies of the similarities between emotional expressions in all animals to
provide further evidence of continuity between species. It has been the inspiration for a
particularly influential theory of emotion known as the basic emotion approach.
Many theorist agree there are basic discrete emotion categories: fear, anger, sadness,
disgust and happiness. Basic emotion models assume that emotions are triggered by
external objects or events, and that each type of emotional trigger sets off a specific
biological response, which is unique to a particular emotion and common to each instance of
that emotion. Thus, each instance of an emotion has the same pattern of behavior, bodily
activation, facial expressions and some would go as far as to suggest experiences, so that
they are easily recognizable to people of all cultures.
William James: Bodily theory of emotions. Seperations of the sensory and motor system. His
conclusion: My thesis on the contrary is that our bodily changes follow directly the
PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of thee same changes as they occur IS
the emotion. SO: bodily changes are an integral part of the emotional response. He also
believed that emotion emerge from more general processes occurring in the motor and the
sensory centers of the brain.
Damasio: emotions as changes in both body and brain states in response to different stimuli.
These bodily changes (somatic markers) are relayed to the brain where they are
transformed into an emotion.
Appraisal theories (Aristotl.): assume that emotions are not triggered in a reflexive or
habitual way, but arise fgrom our interpr4etation of the situation.
, Arnold: emotion relate to our self to an object or stimulus. Emotions draw us towards or
turn us away from objects or situations according to our judgements. This idea is still very
much relevant today. Experiment: arousal bridge. Result: makes little sense in terms of basic
emotions because if they ar4e supposed to be innate and stereotyped responses, the
context should not alter which emotions is experienced.
Two factor theory: combination of previous theories. Experiment: with the injections. Two
very important observations:
1. Cognitive appraisal of a situation is an important part of an emotional response.
2. Expectation is important.
Behaviorists: Pavlov and Skinner. Behavior can be explained through operant learning
processes, and that any behavior could be altered if the correct punishment and reward
schedules could be devised or discovered.
Watson: showed that you can be conditioned to learn an emotional response to a stimulus
that naturally does not produce that emotion.
Constructionist theories: there are no basic emotions. Instead, emotions are built or
constructed from smaller psychological and physiological building blocks or components.
Emotion categories are learned through experience. These models look more of the mental
processes underlying each emotion.
- Component process model was a prominent model by Scherer. Emotions have five
components.
Cannon and Bard: ‘sham rage’ experiment. Result: suggested that the cortex must normally
serve to suppress or inhibit the underlying brain regions in which the emotions must reside.
Papez: Sensory information from outside the body must combine with sensations from
inside the body to give us our experience of emotions. Experiment with injecting rabies.
Result: 3 streams.
- Stream of thought: to the neocortex
- Stream of movement: to the striatum
- Stream of feeling: passing to hypothalamus.
MacLean: continued with idea of 3 streams or divisions. Neomammalian brain,
paleomammalian and reptilian brain. Limbic system as the emotional brain.
LeDoux: 2 brain pathways that mediate fear conditioning:
1. Direct path from thalamus to amygdala: raw sensory info travels directly to the
emotion centers to offer a very rapid signal of threat.
2. Thalamus via the cortex to the amygdala: cognitive appraisal.
So two types of response: instinctive and cognitive.
Chapter 3, Individual emotions.
Fear:
