U09 Psych 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10.1: Thalamus, Facial Feedback Hypothesis, Autonomic Nervous System

• School: WUSTL
• Department: Psychology
• Course: U09 Psych 100
• Professor: Rice Heather, Duchek, Carpenter

Document Summary

Emotion - an immediate, specific negative or positive response to environmental events. Chapter 10. 1 emotions or internal thoughts interrupt whatever is happening, or they trigger changes in thought and behavior. Moods diffuse, long-lasting emotional states that do not have an identifiable object/trigger influence thought and behavior: people"s vague sense that they feel certain ways. The amygdala processes the emotional significance of stimuli, and it generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions. The processing of emotion in the amygdala is a circuit that has developed over the course of evolution to protect animals from danger. Amygdala is the brain structure most important for emotional learning, as in the development of classically conditioned fear responses. People with damage to the amygdala do not develop conditioned fear responses to objects associated with dangerous objects. Information reaches the amygdala along 2 separate pathways: fast system - processes sensory information nearly instantaneously. Sensory information travels quickly through the thalamus directly to the amygdala for priority processing.