PSY2061 Chapter 17: PSY2061 – Readings – Week 10 – Biopsychology of emotion
5 Jun 2018
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PSY2061 – Readings – Week 10 – Biopsychology of emotion
• early landmarks in the biopsychological investigation of emotion
•
o phineas gage
o
▪ following incident - tampering iron through his skill -
changes to personality - became irreverent and impulsive
▪ damage affected both medial and prefrontal lobes -
involved in planning, decision making and emotion
o darwin’s theory of the evolution of emotion
o
▪ darwin argued that particular emotional responses such as
human facial expressions, tend to accompany the same
emotional states in all members of a species
▪ believed that emotions were products of evolution
▪ three main ideas - theory of the evolution of emotional
expression
▪
▪ expressions of emotion evolve from behaviours that
indicate what an animal is likely to do next
▪ if the signals provided by such behaviours benefit
the animal that displays them, they will evolve in
ways that enhance their communicative function
and their original function may be lost
▪ opposite messages are often signalled by opposite
movements and postures - an idea called the
principle of antithesis
▪ accounts for the evolution of threat displays
▪
▪ signals of aggression and submission - evolved in
opposite directions
▪ accounts for the principles of antithesis - e.g.
different positions a dog takes when demonstrating
aggression vs submission
o james-lange and cannon-bard theories
o
▪ first physiological theory of emotion
▪ according to the james-lange theory
▪
▪ emotion-inducing sensory stimuli are received and
interpreted by the cortex - which triggers changes in
the visceral organs via the autonomic nervous
system and in the skeletal muscles via the somatic
nervous system - following this - the autonomic and
somatic responses trigger the experience of emotion
in the brain
▪ argued that the autonomic activity and behaviour
are triggered by the emotional event - e.g. rapid
heartbeat - produce the feeling of emotion - not vice
versa
o cannon-bard theory
o
▪ emotional stimuli have two independent excitatory effects
▪
▪ they excite both the feeling of emotion in the brain
and the expression of emotion in the autonomic and
somatic nervous systems
▪ in contrast to the james-lange theory
▪ views emotional experience and emotional expression as
parallel processes that have no direct causal relation
o the james-lange and cannon-bard theories - comparisons
o
▪ make different predictions about the role of feedback from
autonomic and somatic nervous system activity in
emotional experience
▪ according to james-lange theory - emotional experience
depends entirely on feedback from autonomic and somatic
nervous system activity
▪ according to the cannon-bard theory - emotional
experience is totally independent of such feedback
▪ both extreme positions have proved to be incorrect
▪ failure to find unqualified support for either of the theories
led to the modern biopsychological view
▪
▪ according to this view - each of the three principal
factors in an emotional response - the perception of
the emotion-inducing stimulus, the autonomic and
somatic responses to the stimulus and the
experience of the emotion - can influence the other
two
•
o sham rage
o
▪ Bard - discovered that decorticate cats - cats whose cortex
had been removed - respond aggressively to the slightest
provocation
▪ the aggressive responses of decorate animals are abnormal
in two respects
▪
▪ they are inappropriately severe
▪ not directed at particular targets
▪ bard referred to the exaggerated, poorly directed,
aggressive responses of decorticate animals as sham rage
▪ can be elicited in cats whose cerebral hemispheres have
been removed down to but not including, the hypothalamus
- but it cannot be elicited if the hypothalamus is also
removed
▪ bard concluded - the hypothalamus is critical for the
repression of aggressive responses and that the function of
the cortex is to inhibit and direct these responses
o limbic system and emotion
o
▪ papez - proved that emotional expression is controlled by
several interconnected nuclei and tracts that ring the
thalamus - now known as the limbic system
▪ limbic system includes
▪
▪ the amygdala, mammillary body, hippocampus,
fornix, cingulate cortex, septum, olfactory bulb, and
hypothalamus
▪ papez proposed that emotional states are expressed
through the action of the other structures of the circuit on
the hypothalamus and that they are experienced through
their action on the cortex
▪
o kluver-bucy syndrome
o
▪ kluver and body observed a syndrome (pattern of
behaviour) in monkeys whose anterior temporal lobes had
been removed
▪ this syndrome includes the following behaviours
▪
▪ the consumption of almost anything that is edible
▪ increased sexual activity often directed at
inappropriate objects
▪ a tendency to repeatedly investigate familiar objects
▪ a tendency to investigate objects with the mouth
▪ lack of fear
▪ in primates most of the symptoms appear to result from
damage to amygdala
• emotions and the autonomic nervous system
•
o research has focused on two issues
o
▪ the degree to which specific patterns of ANS activity are
associated with specific emotions
▪ and the effectiveness of ANS measures in polygraphy
o emotional specificity of the autonomic nervous system
o
▪ james-lange theory suggests different emotional stimuli
induce different patterns of ANS activity and that these
different patterns produce different emotional experiences
▪ in contrast - cannon-bard theory claims that all emotional
stimuli produce the same general pattern of sympathetic
