Emotion+and+the+Body


 * The Neuroscience of Emotions (Video)**
 * Animals need emotions to survive
 * We rely on emotions to make quick, complex decisions

Emotions
 * Directs attention
 * Enhances memory
 * Organizes behavior
 * Moral Development
 * Drives social approach and avoidance
 * Adaptive or disregulated

Frontal lobe lesions can result in impaired emotional awareness

Normal --> Extreme Sadness -->Depression Anger -->Unprovoked aggression Pleasure -->Addiction Fear --> Anxiety, phobias, panic Worry --> Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Emotional Intelligence
 * Monitor one's own and others feelings and emotions
 * Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences
 * Interpersonal - understand others emotions
 * Intrapersonal - understand oneself

Infants can imitate adults facial expressions which is the building block for empathy (mirror-neurons)

Neuroplasticity: Training the Brain
 * Learning goes on throughout our lifetime
 * The brain can change, our emotion patterns can change
 * Decrease in grey matter, increase in white matter (pruning process)
 * Meditators who have been meditating for a long time tend to have more grey matter

Emotion and the Body Chapter 4
 * The Physiology of Emotion**

Sympathetic Nervous System
 * Fight or flight
 * Provides skeletal muscles with oxygen and glucose
 * Increase heart rate
 * Makes heart beat harder
 * Increases blood pressure
 * Reduces blood to digestion system
 * Piloerection (hair stand on end)
 * This system is linked to fear, anger, surprise and disgust

Parasympathetic Nervous System
 * Rest and digest
 * Slows heartbeat
 * Constricts blood vessels to the heart
 * This is linked to sadness and happiness

Measures
 * Electrocardiogram (EKG) - measure heart rhythm
 * Blood pressure - measures fast/hardness of heart beat
 * Skin conductance - sweat, salt
 * Respiratory Sinus Arrythmia - difference between inhalation and exhalation
 * Pupil diameter - pupil dilation
 * not perfect measures
 * use them as sign that our parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system are activated

Measure Challenges
 * Change from baseline - might be nervous/anxious
 * Sneezes etc affect it - little things alter measurements
 * Intrusive - Touch your body, etc
 * Slow - change takes time to show up

Facial feedback
 * Facial expressions affect the sympathetic nervous system
 * A smile sends a message to the brain and positive emotions increase
 * James-Lange is somewhat supported by this

Detecting Emotion Lie Detectors
 * It measures several of the arousal responses that accompany emotion, such as breathing, blood pressure and perspiration
 * The polygraph cannot distinguish between anxiety, irritation or guilt; all appear as arousal
 * An innocent person might respond with heightened tension to the accusations

Hormones and Emotion
 * You perceive the sensory stimulus
 * The adrenal gland sends two hormones: epinephrine and norepinephrine
 * They activate the sympathetic nervous system
 * That produces a state of arousal or alertness that provides the body with the energy to act (the pupils dilate, the heart beats faster and breathing speeds up)

The Stress Process > > Amygdala > > Hypothalamus > > Orbitofrontal Regions > > Insula > > Cingulate Cortex > > Ventral Tegmental Area and Nucleus Accumbens > > The Brain and Emotion > Left Hemisphere > Right Hemisphere > > Neurotransmitters >
 * In Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome model, stress affects an individual in three steps: alarm, resistance, exhaustion
 * Alarm - outside stressor jolts the individual, insisting that something should be done
 * Resistance - when the body begins to release cortisol and draws fasts and sugar to find a way to adjust to demands of stress
 * Exhaustion - depleted stores of sugars and fats, this weakens the individual
 * Small structure
 * Responsible for evaluating sensory information and determines its importance
 * Initial decision to approach or withdrawal from situation
 * Its initial response may be overridden by a more accurate appraisal by the cerebral cortex
 * Amygdala is highly connected to other brain areas
 * Regulates internal environment (body temp, respiration, etc.)
 * Lesions to the ventral frontal lobes can result in difficulties altering behavioral strategies in response
 * Damage is associated with changes in social behavior (disinhibition) and problems identifying vocal and facial emotional expression
 * Fear conditioning and anticipation of an aversive stimuli
 * Involved in disgust, pain, sadness, guilt, anticipatory anxiety
 * Regulates pain
 * Involved in fears and phobias
 * Reward circuit
 * Positive emotions
 * Damage to the L.H. leads to loss of the capacity of joy
 * Activation in the L.H. leads to tendencies to approach other people
 * Negative emotions
 * Damage to the R.H. may make people euphoric
 * Activation in the R.H. leads to tendencies to withdraw from people
 * Dopamine - reward circuit (high level more positive moods)
 * Serotonin - related to sleep (reduced level leads to depression)
 * Beta Endorphins

Emotion and the Brain Chapter 5
 * The Physiology of Emotion**

Measures
 * FMRI - functional magnetic resonance imaging - measures how much glucose we burn
 * EEG - measures electrical impulses in the brain

The Brain's Shortcut for Emotions
 * The limbic system is involved in fast decisions
 * The cortex is involved in slow decisions

Main Division of teh Brain Limbic Amygdala (processing emotional stimuli) Hypothalamus (processes information for keeping the body homeostatic, balancing process) Hippocampus (center for memory which is tied to the amygdala, we remember things that create an emotional charge)

Autonomic Nervous System and Hormones
 * Chapter 4: Emotion and the Body**


 * The physical changes associated with emotion are controlled by a branch of the nervous system known as the autonomic nervous system, as well as by hormones running through the bloodstream

The Autonomic Nervous System
 * Autonomic nervous system – consists of neurons extending from the spinal cord to organs such as your heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, genitals, even the smooth muscles surrounding your arteries
 * The autonomic nervous system keeps the body alive and functioning by constantly adjusting conditions inside the body to keep the environment just right for your cell

Sympathetic Nervous System
 * Sympathetic nervous system – the “fight or flight” branch of the autonomic nervous system, that supports and prepares the body for intense muscular activity
 * It provides your skeletal muscles with the oxygen and glucose they need for intense effort. It delivers these resources throughout the body and picks up carbon dioxide and other waste products
 * It also increase heart rate and respiration rate. It also allocates more blood to your brain so you can think quicker and more clearly.
 * The sympathetic nervous system also shuts down the digestive system
 * Salivary glands turn off, leading to a dry mouth
 * The smooth muscles in your intestines stop the pulsing, called peristalsis, that keeps food going in the right direction
 * Your stomach stops secreting enzymes that digest food
 * If you’re really upset, sympathetic activation constricts muscles needed to kick food out of your stomach (vomiting), slightly decreasing body weigh
 * Piloerection – contraction of smooth muscles around the base of hairs, making them stand up
 * Piloerection makes animals look larger and more intimidating
 * The pupils dilate with the activation of the sympathetic nervous system as well

Parasympathetic Nervous System
 * Parasympathetic nervous system – the “rest and digest” branch of the autonomic nervous system, that diverts resources to maintenance and growth activities
 * Parasympathetic system slows down the heartbeat and constricts the blood vessels feeding the heart
 * It also slows down breathing and constricts the bronchioles
 * It constricts the muscles of the iris to make the pupil smaller
 * Parasympathetic activation promotes the secretion of saliva, helping to process the food while you chew
 * It stimulates the secretion of various digestive chemicals into the stomach and stimulates peristalsis so that food moves through the intestines
 * Changes stimulated by parasympathetic activity facilitate energy storage in fatty tissues
 * Parasympathetic activation also promotes body conditions favorable for sexual activity

How the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic Systems work together
 * Both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous systems are “on” continuously, but their activation can be stronger or weaker at any point in time
 * The two systems facilitate different goals, and their interaction defines a number of emotional and other states

Hormones and the Endocrine System
 * Hormones – chemicals assembled by glands in one part of your body and carried through the bloodstream to communicate with organs in other areas
 * This process affects a wide range of physiological functions
 * Emotion researchers are especially interested in the hormones epinephrine and cortisol, which play central roles in our responses to stress
 * Estrogen and testosterone affect emotions as well
 * Higher levels of estrogen appear to have mood-enhancing effects and sharp drops in estrogen have been shown to trigger depressive symptoms
 * Testosterone plays an important role in promoting sexual desire in both men and women
 * Testosterone appears to have mood-enhancing effects for men similar to those of estrogen for women
 * Testosterone has been proposed as a factor in anger and aggression, although the evidence for this is not always consistent

Measuring Physiological Aspects of Emotion
 * Researchers use a wide range of measures to estimate autonomic nervous system activation
 * The best known physiological measure of emotion is heart rate. Researchers detect electrical signals generated by the heart while it contracts. The signal measured using this approach is called an electrocardiogram.
 * Emotion researchers are more likely to measure the average interbeat interval for the period of interest instead. This finer measurement allows researchers to detect much more subtle changes.
 * Another well-known physiological measure is blood pressure, which is influenced by the volume of blood in each heartbeat as well as the constriction of the muscles surrounding the arteries.
 * Computer-controlled blood pressure monitors control a sensor strapped to the wrist or finger, taking a new measure every several seconds
 * Systolic blood pressure – your heartbeat is actively pushing blood through your arteries
 * Diastolic blood pressure – the heart is between beats
 * Patterns of vasoconstriction can be assessed by measuring people’s finger temperature
 * Respiration rate is also typically measured using a pressure-sensitive device
 * Researchers who are interested in measuring where an individual is looking, as well as the size of the pupil, can use an eye-tracking device that provides a chin-rest for the participate, as well as a camera that closely follows the eye
 * Skin conductance level – taps into the increased sweat gland activity resulting from sympathetic activation
 * Cardiac pre-ejection period is another relatively pure measure of sympathetic activation. Cardiac pre-ejection is the time in milliseconds between the beginning of ventricular contraction and the expulsion of blood into the aorta
 * Respiratory sinus arrhythmia – the change in heart rate associated with breathing in versus out’ used as a measure of parasympathetic nervous system activation
 * Individual differences in resting heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol level and so forth are quite dramatic, far outweighing the effects of most laboratory emotion stimuli
 * It also makes it difficult to measure because the autonomic nervous system is constantly adjusting in response to all kinds of events, both within and outside of the body
 * Physiological measures are also intrusive. Obviously an intrusive procedure makes people nervous, so “baseline” in a physiological study usually means “mildly anxious” rather than emotionally neutral
 * Changes in salivary hormones can take 15 minutes or more to detect

The Sympathetic Nervous System and Emotion
 * Emotional response coherence – the extent to which self-reports of emotion actually predict physiological changes and simple behaviors like facial expressions
 * Self-reports of emotion and physiological arousal only weakly predicted each other, and sometime they were inversely related
 * Autonomic specificity hypothesis – different emotions involve different physiological profiles
 * Negative emotions generally seem to involve greater sympathetic activation than happiness, and it has proved difficult to find strong, consistent evidence clearly differentiating among negative emotions
 * Some studies have found that positive emotions involve increased sympathetic arousal
 * Undoing effects of positive emotion – an effect where positive emotions facilitate recovery from sympathetic arousal associated with negative emotion

Stress and its Health Consequences
 * The prime stressor for humans today are different from those of our ancestors
 * Stressors for our remote ancestors were probably much like those of nonhuman animals today—immediate, life and death crises
 * For people today, the most common stressors are less immediate and life-threatening and more prolonged, such as difficulty paying the bills, dealing with a troubled romantic or family relationship, or coping with a stressful job.
 * These problems can persist for weeks, months or years.
 * General adaptation syndrome – Hans Selye’s term for the body’s reaction to any threat
 * Alarm – a brief period of high arousal of the sympathetic nervous system, readying the body for vigorous activity
 * Resistance – a stage of prolonged but moderate arousal
 * During resistance, the adrenal cortex secretes the hormones cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which enable body cells to maintain high, steady levels of activity, heal wounds and fight infections
 * With even more severe challenges, the body enters the stage of exhaustion, characterized by weakness, fatigue, loss of appetite, and lack of interest
 * The immune system becomes less active and the individual becomes more vulnerable to illness
 * Short term responses to stress differ from long term responses
 * Stress, according to Selye’s definition, is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it
 * Researchers developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale
 * The stressfulness of an event depends on how people interpret the event and what they think they can do about it
 * According to Bruce McEwen, stress is “an event or events that are interpreted as threatening to an individual and which elicit physiological and behavioral responses”
 * There is little question that stress is associated with increased risks to health
 * People also tend to get sick after less severe life changes
 * Type A personality – marked by competitiveness, impatience and hostility
 * Most studies have found a significant link between self-reports of anger or hostility and the risk of heart disease itself, or heart conditions that are precursors to disease
 * In particular, frequent intense but inhibited anger is associated with greater risk for heart disease
 * One study found that high levels of anger, anxiety or depression predicted later onset of high blood pressure
 * The second mechanism by which stress might affect health has to do with the distinction between short and long term stress and implications for immune system functioning
 * HPA axis – composed of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and adrenal gland
 * Cortisol – enhances metabolism and increases the availability of fuels
 * The problem comes with long term stress, when the body enters the exhaustion stage of the General Adaptation Syndrome. Although your initial response to a stress activates your immune system, prolonged stress weakens it.

The Parasympathetic nervous System and Emotion
 * Researcher Steve Porges has proposed that one branch of mammals’ parasympathetic nervous system ahs the specific function of facilitating social relationships and is responsible for the positive emotions associated with attachment and affection.
 * Vagal tone – the degree of parasympathetic influence on the heart while a person is at rest
 * Several studies suggest that people with higher vagal tone are better at regulating their emotions
 * And less vulnerable to depression than those with low vagal tone

The Structure of Emotion: Evidence from Neuroimaging Studies by Barrett & Wager -common debate: whether basic elements of emotional life are discrete emotion categories(anger, fear,sadness etc.) or dimensions (avoidance, approach) -basically (summarizing above) whether "basic emotion" approach is true of the "dimensional" approach -experimenters used neuroimaging techniques to study the brain during emotion reactions (fMRI or PET)