PSY2061 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Classical Conditioning, Autonomic Nervous System, B Cell
5 Jun 2018
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PSY2061 – Lecture – Week 10 – Biospychology of emotion
• learning objectives
•
o Summarise the major events in the history of research on the
biopsychology of emotion
o Discuss the facial expression of emotions
o Describe the types of aggressive and defensive behaviours
and their dependence on testosterone
o Explain fear conditioning and its neural mechanisms
o Discuss current knowledge of the brain mechanisms of
human emotion
o Summarise the effects of stress on health
o Describe the immune system and how immune function is
influenced by stress
• biopsychology of emotion
•
o early landmarks in the biopsychological investigation of emotion
o
▪ phineas gage
▪
▪ railroad worker - rod severed frontal lobes - right
▪ dramatic change in personality - erratic, impulsive,
child-like
▪ patient EVR
▪
▪ brain tumour in frontal lobes
▪ emotions and its relevance to decision making - aids
decision making
▪ impacts to emotions impact on decision making
processes
▪ lobotomy - changes in personality and emotions
▪ darwin’s theory of the evolution of emotion
▪
▪ expression of emotions evolve from behaviours that
indicate what an animal is likely to do nest
▪ if the signal provided by such behaviours benefit the
animal that displays them, they will evolve in a way
that enhance their communicative function and their
original function may be lost
▪ opposite messages are often singled by opposite
movements and postures - principle of antithesis - -
gestures/emotions sometimes signals something an
animal is not going to do - e.g. demonstrated by dog’s
in submission compared to aggression - animals less
likely to attack you
▪ james-lange theory
▪
▪ example if something scary happens - arousal of
autonomic response - cognitive conclusion - that
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must be a fearful thing - our bodies respond to the
stimulus - and from the interpretation of our body’s
response to the stimulus we can make a conclusion
about its related emotion - e.g. fear
▪ cannon-bard theory
▪
▪ emotional stimuli - evoke both the body and
emotional responses
▪ body response is not necessary to get the emotional
response
▪ stimuli an affect both interpretation of the emotion
as well as the physical responses involved
▪ experience of emotion can effect the way we
perceive a stimulus
▪ sham rage
▪
▪ cortex removed without hypothalamus
▪ aggression without focus
▪ is the cortex of the brain necessary for emotion - not
necessary - concluded from this experiment
▪ animals can still demonstrate range when their
cortex was revolved
▪ rage easier provoked than normal
▪ limbic system and emotion -papez
▪
▪ hypothalamus important for emotion production -
hormone production - regulated through the
hypothalamus - controller gland
▪ access to lower brain areas
▪ evolutionary very old - conserved system
▪ brain system that specialises in emotion processing
▪ between cortex and lower brain areas
▪ amygdala
▪
▪ emotion processing
▪ hippocampus
▪ olfactory bulbs - sensory - smells - linked to limbic
system - thus linked to emotions
▪ clever-bucy syndrome
▪
▪ evidence from lesion studies with monkeys - take
out temporal cortex
▪ demonstrated roles of amygdala and elements of
limbic system - in emotion
▪ two elements of syndrome
▪
▪ hyper sexuality
▪ hyperorality
▪
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
