PSY 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Autonomic Nervous System, Polygraph, Blood Sugar
15 May 2018
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April 11, 2018
EMOTION
I. INTRODUCTION TO EMOTION
A. Polygraph Test
1. Guilty Knowledge Test
a) Asked control questions to establish baseline measures of
physiological variables before asking the target questions.
b) The examiner then asks relevant questions and looks for
changes in physiological variables as assessed by changes in the
sweep of the pen on the polygraph paper.
c) The theory is that guilty people will respond differently,
physiologically, compared to innocent people, i.e., there is an
assumption that it is stressful (physiologically arousing) to get
caught lying.
2. People learned how to beat the polygraph machine by masking
their physiological responses
a) e.g., they make themselves excessively nervous during the
baseline phase so it is hard to distinguish changes in responses
between the baseline and target questions
B. Therefore, a new type of brain wave measure has been suggested to be
added to the polygraph test: the P300 response.
Dip in the EEG
a) Brain makes a particular kind of pattern called P300 when
a person recognizes stimuli that have been encountered before (a
very controversial notion). You cannot mask the P300 response.
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2
II. EMOTIONS ARE PATTERNS OF REPSONSES
1. Physiological changes
2. Behavioral displays
3. Subjective feelings
4. Cognitions
Emotions: relatively brief strong
Mood: longer lived, weaker
Temperament: longer still, general disposition
III. PHYSIOLOGY OF EMOTION
A. Autonomic Nervous System
1. Strong emotions include sympathetic response: fight or flight
a) Fight or flight response increases
(1) Heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose,
respiration, and adrenaline
B. Brain Areas
1. Hypothalamus
a) Associated with several aspects of emotional responses like
making behavioral display during an emotion, increases
sympathetic arousal often during emotion, and increase hormone
secretion during an emotion
2. Amygdala
a) Extreme arousal, aggression and maybe sexual related
behavior
b) Example: Charles Whitman (Texas Sniper) had a tumor on
his amygdala, back then they believed the tumor agitated his
amygdala causing him to do what he did
3. Orbito-frontal cortex
a) Phineas Gage was using dynamite to clear rocks, a tamping
rod went through his head removing some orbitofrontal cortex.
Before accident he was serious and industrious, after the accident
people said he was childish, and irresponsible.
(1) Orbitofrontal damage does often cause people to
show indifference to consequences of their actions and they
may become socially uninhibited
C. Lobotomy
1. Antonio Egaz- Moniz
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Document Summary
Asked control questions to establish baseline measures of physiological variables before asking the target questions . The examiner then asks relevant questions and looks for changes in physiological variables as assessed by changes in the sweep of the pen on the polygraph paper. The theory is that guilty people will respond differently, physiologically, compared to innocent people, i. e. , there is an caught lying. assumption that it is stressful (physiologically arousing) to get. People learned how to (cid:498)beat the polygraph machine(cid:499) by masking e. g. , they make themselves excessively nervous during the their physiological responses baseline phase so it is hard to distinguish changes in responses between the baseline and target questions. Therefore, a new type of brain wave measure has been suggested to be added to the polygraph test: the p300 response. Brain makes a particular kind of pattern called p300 when a person recognizes stimuli that have been encountered before (a very controversial notion).
