PSY 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Autonomic Nervous System, Amygdala, Neuropsychology
12 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Emotions
Jadzia Wray
What is an emotion?
- A complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence
thought and behavior.
- Emotion is NOT a feeling. Feelings subjectively represent emotions. (emotions are universal,
everyone can feel the same emotion to a certain extent)
- Emotion is NOT mood. Mood lasts longer than an emotion (feeling depressed: emotion is
depression, mood is sad)
Neuropsychology of Emotion
- Hypothalamus-link in circuits that converts emotional signals into autonomic and endocrine
responses
- Limbic system-Amygdala plays central role in linking sensory stimuli with feelings
- Cortex-allows assessment of whether stimulus is safe or not, interpretation of meaning of
peripheral responses and regulation of facial displays
- Two pathways of the brain:
o The information goes first to the thalamus and from there moves simultaneously to the
amygdala and the cortex of the brain.
o The amygdala processes the information quickly and sends signals to the hypothalamus,
which in turn activates the autonomic nervous system.
o The cortex, on the other hand, processes the information more slowly, allowing people
to appraise or evaluate the event.
James – Lange Theory (physiological and then emotion)
- People experience emotion because the pereie their odies’ phsiologial resposes to
external events. E.g., people feel sad because they cry or they feel happy because they smile
- The way you understand emotion is based on physiological cues
- Put in a hot room → feel fear
- Running has the same physiological arousal as fear
CRITICISMS
- People can experience physiological arousal without experiencing emotion (running-racing heart
does’t ea fear
- Physiological reactions happen too slowly to cause experiences of emotion (dark sound in an alley
immediately causes fear without the physiological symptoms)
- People can experience different emotions to the same physiological symptom (racing heart can
be anger and fear)
- Very based on physiological aspect and not the cortex aspect
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