Lecture 8 - Emotion

Emine Ilgın Hoşgelen-Bilgin

1
Learning objectives
• Fear
• Agression
• Impulse control
• Communication of emotions
• Feeling emotions

2
What is emotion?
• Communication mechanisms that maintain social order/structure
• Behavior learned through operant or classical conditioning, not
involving cognitive mediation
• Appraisal of biopsychosocial situation
• Complex physiological response
• Integrated, three-response system construct

3
 Emotions and feelings
Emotion and feelings are related concepts, but they refer to slightly different aspects of our psychological experiences.

Emotions Feelings

• The subjective experiences or interpretations of

• Complex physiological and psychological emotions
responses to stimuli in our environment or • feelings involve conscious awareness and
internal thoughts cognitive appraisal of those emotional
experience
• primarily biological responses that involve
• influenced by personal beliefs, past experiences,
changes in neurochemicals, hormones, and
cultural norms, and social context
bodily responses
• feelings are often more enduring and can persist
• considered to be universal human even after the initial emotional response has
experiences faded
• E.g. include happiness, sadness, anger, fear, • E.g. include joy, sorrow, love, resentment, and
surprise, and disgust. contentment. 4
 PHYSIOLOGICA
EMOTIONS
L CHANGES
AND
AND
EMOTIONAL
BEHAVIORS
RESPONSES
ASSOCIATED
ARE TWO
WITH EMOTION
DIFFERENT
ARE
TERMS AND
IMPORTANT
PROCESSES
FOR SURVIVAL

5
 Motivation versus Emotion

Emotion, a subjective sensation experienced as a type of psycho- physiological

arousal, differs from motivation in that it has no goal or direction.
Motivation refers to the process that initiates, guides, and sustains goal-oriented
behaviors.

Emotions result from the interaction of the

(a) perception of environmental stimuli,
(b) neural/hormonal responses to these perceptions (feelings), and
(c) cognitive labeling of these feelings.
 What is emotion?
“Like so many psychological phenomena, emotion is easily
recognized but hard to define.
Most theories hold that emotion
is a syndrome or complex entity
with many components:
physiological (autonomic nervous system), cognitive events,
sensory input, behavioral correlates.”
Benoit, Anthony G. (2002). Emotion and Motivation. Retrieved from http://environmentalet.org/psy111/motimotion.htm
What is the value of emotion?
• Emotions
(a) prepare us for action,
(b) shape our behavior by reinforcing certain actions,
(c) regulate social interactions,
(d) facilitate nonverbal communication,
(e) support parent-child bonding and development,
(f) enhance life by adding meaning to experiences, and
(g) help us respond flexibly to our environment (approaching
positives, avoiding negatives).
• Emotions are typically expressed through communication.
• Most people do not maintain a "poker face," and emotional responses are often
visible.
• Understanding someone's emotions helps us predict their behavior.
Emotions are largely conscious phenomena.
• They involve more bodily manifestations than other conscious states.
• They vary along several dimensions: intensity, type, origin, arousal, value, self-
regulation, etc.
• They are often regarded as “antagonists of rationality.”
• However, they protect us from a “slavish devotion” to rationality.
• Emotions play an indispensable role in determining the quality of life and in
defining our priorities.
• They have a central place in moral education and moral life, influencing
conscience, empathy, and specific moral emotions such as shame, guilt, and
remorse. They are inextricably linked to virtues.
Three Ways to Measure Emotion
• Behavior – screaming, facial expressions, laughing, aggression,
approach/avoidance, activity level, smiling, attention/distraction, alertness, etc.
• Body/Physical – blood pressure, tears, heart rate, neural images, lie detector
readings, posture, sweating, adrenaline, muscle activity when smiling,
frowning, etc.
• Thoughts – observed indirectly through: spoken and written words on rating
scales; answers to open-ended questions on surveys and during interviews;
responses to projective instruments, sentence stems, etc. Emotion can
interfere with many cognitive operations such as rational/logical thinking and
the ability to objectively self-assess or perceive the behavior and intentions of
others.
Introduction & History
James-Lange theory

Cannon-Bard theory

Schacter & Singer studies (2-factor

theory)

Facial feedback hypothesis

Neurobiological contributions
(Davis, LeDoux)
Neuropsychological perspectives
(Somatic markers Emotional, signal
processing)
Information-processing theories
11
Mind blowing case: Phineas Gage

patients with vmPFC have difficulty

expressing and experiencing
appropriate emotions. This led Antonio
Damasio to hypothesize that decision-
making deficits following vmPFC
damage result from the inability to use
emotions to help guide future behavior
based on past experiences.

12
Darwin’s theory of the evolution of
emotion
• Expressions of emotion evolve from behaviors that indicate
what an animal is likely to do next.
• If the signals provided by such behaviors 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 signaled by opposite
movements and postures, an idea called the principle of
antithesis.
• Signals of aggression and submission must be clearly
distinguishable

13
James-Lange
• "My theory ... is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the
exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the
emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a
bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, and angry and strike. The
hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect ... and
that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry
because we strike, afraid because we tremble ... Without the bodily states
following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale,
colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it
best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not
actually feel afraid or angry"

14
 James-Lange Theory of Emotion
• Experience of emotion is awareness of physiological
responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

Sight of Pounding Fear

oncoming heart (emotion)
car (arousal)
(perception of
stimulus)

15
Cannon-Bard
• We feel emotions first, and then feel physiological
changes, such as muscular tension, sweating, etc.
• In neurobiological terms, the thalamus receives a signal
and relays this both to the amygdala (a limbic structure)
and the cortex.  The body then gets signals via the
autonomic nervous system to tense muscles, etc.

16
 Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion
Pounding
heart • Emotion-arousing
Sight of
(arousal)
stimuli almost
oncoming
car
simultaneously trigger:
(perception of • physiological
stimulus) responses
• subjective experience
Fear
of emotion
(emotion)

17
18
• The James-Lange theory says that different emotional stimuli induce different
patterns of ANS activity and that these different patterns produce different
emotional experiences.

In contrast,

• The Cannon-Bard theory claims that all emotional stimuli produce the same
general pattern of sympathetic activation, which prepares the organism for action
(i.e., increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, pupil dilation, increased flow
of blood to the muscles, increased respiration, and increased release of
epinephrine and norepinephrine from the adrenal medulla).

19
 Four ways of thinking about the relations among the perception
of emotion-inducing stimuli, the autonomic and somatic responses to the
stimuli, and the emotional experience.

20
Two-Factor Theory
• When trying to understand what kind of person we are, we first watch
what we do and feel and then deduce our nature from this. This means
that the first step is to experience physiological arousal.
• We then try to find a label to explain our feelings, usually by looking
at what we are doing and what else is happening at the time of the
arousal.
• Thus we don’t just feel angry, happy or whatever: we experience
feelings and then decide what they mean.

21
 Schacter’s Two-Factor Theory of Emotion

• To experience
Pounding
heart emotion one must:
(arousal) • be physically
Sight of Fear
oncoming (emotion)
aroused
car • cognitively
(perception of label the
stimulus) arousal

Cognitive
label

“I’m afraid”

22
Somatic Marker Theory
• The somatic marker hypothesis proposes
that emotions play a critical role in the
ability to make fast, rational decisions in
complex and uncertain situations.
• Bodily states play a role in decision-making
and reasoning
• “Somatic markers” link memories of
experience (cortex) with feelings (limbic)
• Attempts to account for ‘automatic’ or
‘unconscious’ biases
23
 First limbic system Emotion is not just a feeling
theory by Papez —it’s processed by a network
(pronounced of brain regions working
together.
Payps) in 1937

Lymbic 1952
system and
1937
emotion
The limbic system is a
Paul Maclean in
specialized set of brain structures 1952 «limbic
responsible for emotion, system theory of
motivation, and memory. emotion»

24
 Two Neural Pathways for Emotion (especially fear):

Joseph LeDoux (1998): found evidence for two neural pathways in the
processing of fear.

1.The Low Road (Quick, Automatic, Unconscious)

1. Pathway: Sensory input → Thalamus → Amygdala
2. This route is fast but crude.
3. It allows for a quick emotional reaction (like fear) before you're even fully aware
of the stimulus.
4. Example: You jump at the sight of a rope thinking it's a snake.
2.The High Road (Slow, Conscious, Accurate)
1. Pathway: Sensory input → Thalamus → Sensory cortex → Amygdala
2. This route is slower but more accurate.
3. The brain analyzes the stimulus in more detail before responding.
4. Example: You look again and realize it's just a rope, not a snake.
So the Brain Executes an
Emotional Shortcut In Crises
• We sometimes feel emotions before we think.
• Some neural pathways involved in emotion bypass the brain’s
cortical areas responsible for thinking.
• Two such pathways transmit signals from the eye and ear to the
amygdala via the thalamus—with the amygdala acting as the brain’s
emotional control center.
• This shortcut allows for a quick, automatic emotional response
before conscious thought occurs.
• However, the thinking cortex can eventually override the
amygdala’s initial emotional reaction.
27
Klüver-Bucy Syndrome
• First observed in monkeys whose anterior temporal lobes had been
removed
• Includes behaviors like:
• 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,
• and a lack of fear. (even in response to snakes, which terrify normal monkeys)

• Appear to result from damage to the amygdala

28
29
 Emotions and autonomic nervous system
• Emotions has focused on two issues
related to ANS
• specific patterns of ANS activity are
associated with specific emotions
• the effectiveness of ANS measures in
polygraphy (lie detection).

• On one hand, evidence indicates that not

all emotions are associated with the same
pattern of ANS activity; on the other,
there is no evidence that each emotion is
characterized by a distinct pattern of ANS
activity.

30
Polygraphy
• Known as «lie detector test»
• The usual interrogation method is the control-question
technique

• in which the physiological response to the target question

• “Did you steal that purse?”) is compared with the
physiological responses to control questions whose
answers are known e.g. “Have you ever been in jail
before?”

• The assumption is that lying will be associated with greater

sympathetic activation.
• The average success rate is 80%
31
Discrete Emotions Theory
• Emotions are distinct and unique states (e.g., fear, anger, etc.)
• ‘Basic’ or ‘primary’ emotions - Tomkins lists 8 (happy, sad, anger, fear
disgust, surprise, interest, shame)
• Search for response patterning in emotions (Friesen, Ekman, etc.)
• Cross-cultural comparisons

32
Emotions of facial expressions
Ekman and Friesen (1971) studied the ability of members of an isolated tribe in New
Guinea to recognize facial expressions of emotion produced by members of other
cultures.

They concluded:

UNIVERSALITY OF PRIMARY FACIAL FACIAL FEEDBACK VOLUNTARY

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS HYPOTHESIS CONTROL OF FACIAL
EXPRESSIONS EXPRESSIONS:

33
Universality of facial
expressions:

Several studies have found that

people of different cultures make
similar facial expressions in similar
situations and that they can
correctly identify the emotional
significance of facial expressions
displayed by people from cultures
other than their own.

34
 Primary facial expressions
the facial expressions of the following seven emotions are primary:
surprise, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, happiness and (later expanded to
7) contempt

35
 Facial feedback hypothesis

Is there any truth to the old idea that putting on a happy face can make
you feel better?
Research suggests that there is.

• Facial Feedback
Hypothesis
• Activation of “sad
face” muscles
makes subject feel
sadder (from
Larsen, et al.,
1992)

36
 Facial
feedback
hypothesi
s

37
Voluntary control of facial expressions:
Expressing Emotion

Smiles can show different

emotions:

a) Mask anger
b) Overly polite
(a) (b)
c) Soften criticism
d) Reluctant compliance

(c) (d)
38
Emotion Recognition

• Comprehension of emotion from

word meaning ↑ the activity of the
prefrontal cortex bilaterally, the left
hemisphere more than the right
• Comprehension of emotion from
tone of voice increased the activity
of only the right prefrontal cortex.

39
 Affective blindsight
• Heilman et al. (1983) recorded a particularly interesting case of
a man with a disorder called pure word deafness, caused by
damage to the left temporal cortex.
• The man could not comprehend the meaning of speech but had
no difficulty identifying the emotion being expressed by its
intonation.
• This case, like the functional-imaging study by George and
colleagues (1996), indicates that comprehension of words and
recognition of tone of voice are independent functions.

• Some people with blindness caused by damage to the visual

cortex can recognize facial expressions of emotion even though
they; have no conscious awareness of looking at a person’s face,
a phenomenon known as affective blindsight (Anders et al.,
2004; de Gelder et al., 1999).
40
LGN: Lateral
Geniculate Nucleus
of Amygdala 41
Fear, defense and agression
• Fear: is the emotional reaction to threat; it is the motivating force for defensive
behaviors.

• Defensive behaviors: are behaviors whose primary function is to protect the

organism from threat or harm.

• Agressive behaviors: are behaviors whose primary function is to threaten or

harm.

• Role of serotonin: The cumulative results of many studies suggest that the
activity of serotonergic synapses inhibits aggression.
42
• Human aggression reveals
that associations between
endogenous testosterone and
aggressive behaviour are
relatively weak and
moderated by sex (baseline
and acute changes) and
offender status (baseline
testosterone).
• Results from exogenous
testosterone administration
work did not provide
compelling evidence for a
causal role of testosterone in
promoting aggression.
43
Recognizing the emotion from the eyes

• By themselves, eyes are able to

convey a fearful expression.
• A functional-imaging study by Whalen
and colleagues (2004) found that
viewing the fearful eyes activated the
ventral amygdala, the region that
receives the majority of the cortical
and subcortical inputs to the
amygdala.

44
PERCIEPTION OF DIRECTION OF GAZE
• Brain function that may be related to recognition of emotional expression.
• They found that neurons in the monkey's superior temporal sulcus (STS) are
involved in recognition of the direction of another monkey’s gaze-or even that of a
human.

• Why important:
• First, it is important to know whether an emotional expression is directed toward
you or toward someone else.
• E.g. if someone else shows signs of fear, the expression can serve as a useful
warning, but only if you can figure out what the person is looking at.

45
46
 Fear
• Fear is an adaptive emotional response that is coordinated in the brain by the nuclei of the
amygdala.

• The behavioral component consists of muscular movements that are appropriate to the situation
that causes them.
• Autonomic responses facilitate the behaviors and provide quick mobilization of energy for
vigorous movement.
• Hormonal responses reinforce the autonomic responses. 47
 Neural mechanisms of fear
• The most basic form of emotional learning is a conditioned emotional response, which is
produced by a neutral stimulus that has been paired with an emotion-producing stimulus.
• In a standard fear-conditioning experiment,

• After several pairings of the color and the shock, the rat responds to the colour with a variety of
defensive behaviors (e.g., freezing and increased susceptibility to startle) and sympathetic nervous
system responses (e.g., increased heart rate and blood pressure).

48
Extinction

49
Amygdala and fear conditioning
• Some stimuli automatically activate the
central nucleus of the amygdala and produce
fear reactions-for example, loud unexpected
noises, the approach of large animals,
heights, or (for some species) specific
sounds or odors.

• Lateral nucleus of the amygdala—not the

entire amygdala—is critically involved in
the acquisition, storage, and expression of
conditioned fear.

50
51
 Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
• Extinction is not the same as forgetting.
• Instead, the animal learns that the CS is no longer
followed by an aversive stimulus, and, as a result of
this learning, the expression of the CR is inhibited

• Conditioned response inhibition is supplied by the

ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)

• The vmPFC receives direct inputs from the

dorsomedial thalamus, temporal cortex, ventral
tegmental area, olfactory system, and amygdala

• People with vmPFC damage show impairments

• of emotional reaction
52
Structures - Nucleus Function
Central Nucleus of the Amygdala Activation produces fear-related behaviors;
lesioning prevents production of fear-
related behaviors, defensive behaviors
Lateral Nucleus of the Amygdala Involved in producing conditioned
emotional responses,
also involved in the acquisition, storage,
and expression of conditioned fear
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Involved in extinction of conditioned
(vmPFC) emotional response
Hippocampus interact with that part of the amygdala to
mediate learning about the context of fear-
related events

53
EMOTION AND MEMORY

54
Role of hippocampus in fear
• Environments, or contexts, in which fear-inducing stimuli are encountered can
come to provoke fear.
• You are alone in the forest at night, and you see a trail of a bear the trial itself will
begin to trigger the fear  Fear inducing stimuli  Contextual fear conditioning

Remember: hippocampus plays a key role in memory for spatial location and
relational learning.

55
 “Bambi” (1942)
named #20 in Time’s
list of the Top 25
Horror Movies of All
Time
“Kids were so frightened by
these films that they wet
themselves in terror. Bambi has a
primal shock that still haunts
oldsters who saw it 40, 50, 65
years ago.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZPMJj-X9M
56
Emotional memory
• When people encounter events that produce a strong emotional response, they
are more likely to remember these events.

• Flashbulb memories: Distinct, vivid, recollections of shocking events, and associated

personal activities,
• Sometimes replacing the gaps with false memories
• Long-lasting? Accurate? Special?

•
Earthquake in K.Maraş
Remember?
How does it make you feel?
Do you remember the date?
Do you remember the tsunami and earthquake in japan? 57
Impulse control
• Impulsive violence is a consequence of faulty emotional regulation.

• For many of us, frustrations may elicit an urge to respond emotionally, but we
usually manage to calm ourselves and suppress these urges.

• The ventromedial prefrontal cortex plays an important role in regulating our

responses to such situations.

• vmPFC serves as an interface between brain mechanisms involved in automatic

emotional responses (both learned and unlearned) and those involved in the
control of complex behaviors
58
Serotonin and impulse control
• Serotonergic input to the prefrontal cortex inhibits the amygdala and suppresses
aggressive and impulsive behavior.

• Increasing serotonergic activity reduces impulsive behavior.

• The vmPFC of people with impulsive aggression contains less dense serotonergic
input.

59
60
Cerebral lateralizaton of emotion
• The right-hemisphere model: emotion holds that the right hemisphere is
specialized for all aspects of emotional processing: perception, expression, and
experience of emotion.
• The valence model: the right hemisphere is specialized for processing negative
emotions and the left hemisphere is specialized for processing positive emotions.

Theories of lateralization of emotion are too general from a

neuroanatomical perspective.
Overall comparisons between left and right hemispheres
revealed no interhemispheric differences in either the amount
of emotional processing or the valence of the emotions being
processed. 61
Moral decision making
• Emotional reactions guide moral judgments as well as decisions involving
personal risks and rewards and that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in these
judgments as well.

• The vmPFC is involved in making moral judgments.

• When people make judgments that involve conflicts between utilitarian judgments
and personal moral judgments, the vmPFC is activated.

• People with damage to the vmPFC display utilitarian moral judgments.

62
Moral decision making

63
 Emotion and Performance
• Performance impaired by high levels of state anxiety
• Yerkes-Dodson Law
• performance is optimal with a ‘medium’ level of arousal
• ‘optimum’ level lower for hard tasks
• Cognitive Interference theory (Sarason): worry and self-preoccupation interfere
• Processing Efficiency Theory (Eysenck): processing efficiency =
effectiveness/effort; worry reduces efficiency
• Performance in depression
• impaired both by task-irrelevant information and poor effort/motivation
• most studies are of an anologue nature, though a few patient studies are available

64
Arousal
• Is a term that refers to the level of wakefulness or alertness
experienced by an individual.

Higher levels of arousal levels trigger, ↑ levels of anxiety which also

increases distractibility  and lower levels of attention and focus

65
66
The Yerkes-Dodson Law
• Is a psychological principle that explains the relationship between arousal level
and performance.
• This law suggests that performance is determined by the level of arousal, and that
an increase in arousal level can enhance performance up to a certain point, but
excessive arousal can decrease performance.

Optimal Arousal High Arousal

Low Arousal Levels
Level Levels:
• At low arousal • Performance is • Performance may
levels, performance typically highest at decrease again at
may also be low moderate arousal high arousal levels
because the levels. At this point, because excessive
individual's the individual is stress or anxiety
attention and sufficiently can distract
motivation may be motivated and attention and
insufficient. attentive, but does reduce functionality.
not experience
excessive stress or
67
anxiety.
 Anxiety and Attention
• Selective attention toward threat-related material (selective attentional
bias; e.g. dot-probe, emotional stroop)
• Distractibility (  attentional control)
• Effects on breadth of attention (focus of an individual's attention)
• Interpretive bias: interpreting neurtal materials as threatening (e.g., “The
doctor examined little Emily’s growth”)
• Anxiety and preattentive processing alters automatic threat detection.

68
Summary
• Emotional situations produce widespread increases in cerebral activity, not just in
the amygdala and prefrontal cortex.

• All brain areas activated by emotional stimuli are also activated during other
psychological processes.

• No brain structure has been invariably linked to a particular emotion.

• The same emotional stimuli often activate different areas in different people.

• Psychological process are biological processes too.

69
• Psychology says ………… ???

70
 Direct and
indirect neural
projections of
emotions

LaBar, K. S., & Cabeza, R. (2006).

Cognitive neuroscience of
emotional memory. Nature
Reviews Neuroscience, 7(1), 54-
64

MTL: Medial Temporal Lobe, HPA: Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal- Adrenal Axis, PFC: Prefrontal Cortex
71