NE 202 MIDTERM EXAM 3 STUDY GUIDE Q & A 2023

NE 202 MIDTERM EXAM 3 Q & A 2024
 Basic Emotions & Neural substrates
o Basic emotions
 Innate, cross cultural, evolutionarily old emotions that are expressed by
particular physiological patterns and facial configurations
 Most basic emotions are unpleasant in valence
 Facial Expressions & Emotion
 Vector & Circumplex Models
o Vector Model
 Order emotions along axis of positive and negative valence oriented at 90
degree angles meeting at a common endpoint
 Arousal is measured by the distance from the neutral endpoint
 Looks like a boomerang
o Circumplex Model
 Orders emotion around the circumference of a circle centered at the
intersection of two orthogonal axes of arousal (X-axis) and valence (Y-
axis)
 The circumplex model is more suggestive of a continuum of emotional
states
 Skin Conductance Response
o Reflects the activity of sweat glands
o Recorded form the second and third digits of the hand
o Eccrine sweat glands on these body parts receive no parasympathetic innervation
o Activity of sweat glands during emotional arousal increases electrical conduction
of skin surface
o Widely used in polygraph tests
o Slow signal: better for arousal than valence
 Startle Response
o Musculoskeletal reflex
o Eye-blink component of the startle response is measured by electrodes over the
orbicularis/forehead
o Sensitive to emotional valence (not arousal)
o Includes the brainstem reticular formation that plays a role in arousal and
interfaces with sensory and motor functions
o EMG measurements of eye muscles
o Measures musculoskeletal reflex
o Fast, brief signal better for valence than arousal
 3 Component Model of Emotions
o breaking down the concept of emotion into different information-processing
stages
 the evaluation of sensory input
 the conscious experience of a feeling/state of being
 the expression of behavioral and physiological responses
o PHYSIOLOGY
o FEELING

, o BEHAVIOR
 Cannon-Bard Diencephalon theory
o Physiological changes and subjective feeling of emotion are separate and
independent
o Emotional expression results from hypothalamus
o Emotional feeling results from thalamus
o Suggested that the autonomic nervous system coordinates the body’s general
fight-or flight response which mobilizes the body’s resources in preparation for
appropriate action in an emotionally arousing situation
o They surgically disconnected the cerebral cortex from the brainstem and other
subcortical nuclei
 They found that the severed animals could exhibit integrated emotional
reactions (defense behavior) if the transection occurred above the level of
the diencephalon (hypothalamus and thalamus)
o THUS they proposed that when an emotional stimulus was processed by the
diencephalon, it was directed simultaneously to the neocortex for generating
emotion and to the rest of the body for the expression of emotional reactions
o Thalamus and hypothalamus are integral for emotion expression and emotion
 James-Lange Theory of Emotion
o “do we run from a bear because we are scared or we are scared because we run”
o James said the fact that we are scared is because we are running
o James said: the experience of an emotion depends on prior set of changes in the
body that feed back to the brain
o Lange said: cardiac function was relevant for emotion AND specific feelings
emerged directly from the pattern of somatic feedback and goes to the brain
 Also felt that BRAIN STEM NUCLEI were important
o Feedback loop
 Theory suggest NO specialized brain region for processing emotion
o Consensus view: experience of emotion is modulated by physiological feedback
 Limbic System Gross Anatomy
o “visceral brain”
 Papez circuit
 Broca’s limbic lobe
 Subcortical nuclei (septum and basal ganglia)
 Ventromedial and orbital prefrontal cortex
 Amygdala
 Orbitofrontal cortex
 Hippocampus
 Contains a keyboard for emotion and integrates emotional
reactions
 But this theory is under attack because damage to the hippocampus
results in more memory damage than emotional
o Brain REGIONS INVOLVED
 Amygdala (learning and fear)
 Cingulate cortex (rationale)
 Hippocampus (learning and memory)

,  Hypothalamus (homeostasis and drive)
 Thalamic nuclei (sensory relay)
 Nucleus accumbens (reward and drive)
 Cortical areas – Orbito Frontal Cortex (rationale)
 Patient S.M.
o Bilateral amygdala damage
o Could not draw the face of fear
o INTACT factual knowledge of the predictive relationship between the CS and the
US but FAILS to exhibit conditioned skin conductance responses
o Can not recognize fear in facial expressions
o Congenital damage to the amygdala caused by disease that effects the medial
temporal lobe
o Difficulty extracting info from the eye region, wide eyes or fear but if she is told
to look at the eyes than she can do a better job of recognizing fear
 Papez Circuit
o Basically the limbic system
o Emotion processing
o Cortex is involved with feelings and conscious experience
o Sensory input  Thalamus
o Cingulate gyrus  is key for the emotions we consciously feel
o Hypothalamus  is key in regulating the physiological response for the emotions
we feel
o Anterior thalamus  physiological expression
o Hippocampus  associations with memory
 Memories influence responses
o Based on hypothalamus projections in brain
 PTSD pg 320
o Hippocampus is key role for context reinstatement of conditioning
o Evidence suggesting hippocampus is at fault for PTSD
 Small hippocampal volume does seem to make people more susceptible to
PTSD
 Larger hippocampus is more protective against PTSD
 SSRI’S grow more neuron in hippocampus increasing hippocampal
volume to stop depression
o Patients with both drug abuse and PTSD have a much lower hippocampal volume
 Fear Perception w/o Awareness
o Simple forms of fear conditioning can be partly dissociated from declarative
memory  a finding supported by the fact that fear-relevant stimuli can be
conditioned subliminally without conscious awareness
o If we rapidly present fearful eyes vs happy eyes you will be able to say you saw
eyes but not report whether they were neutral or happy or fearful
 BUT the amygdala knows because the amygdala will respond more
heavily to the happy eyes than the unhappy eyes
 Flashbulb Memories
o Refers to all vivid details of an emotionally fraught episode that are registered
graphically in the mind’s eye