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Questions and Answers
What type of stress is primarily linked to poor health outcomes?
Which component of the stress response releases hormones as a reaction to stress?
How does the immune system typically respond to pathogens?
What is a psychosomatic disorder?
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Which statement is true regarding brief stressors?
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What effect does chronic stress have on the immune system?
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How do individual differences affect the stress response?
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What role do cytokines play in the immune system?
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Which brain structure plays a critical role in the enhancement of memory for emotional events during retention intervals?
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What phenomenon is observed when attentional blink is reduced in the presence of an emotional stimulus?
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Which cognitive process is directly influenced by the somatic marker hypothesis proposed by Damasio et al.?
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Which term describes the enhanced retrieval of memories associated with high emotional arousal?
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In the context of instructed fear paradigms, what role does the amygdala play?
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How does damage to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) affect decision making?
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What enhances emotional responses and memory during explicit learning?
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Which of the following conditions is associated with threat-specific attentional hypervigilance?
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Which theory suggests that an emotional response occurs after the brain processes a stimulus and assesses it cognitively?
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What role does the hypothalamus play in emotional expression according to sham rage experiments?
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In the context of fear conditioning, what is the function of the lateral nucleus of the amygdala?
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Which brain structure is primarily involved in distinguishing between contextual and discrete fear conditioning?
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What characterizes Kluver-Bucy syndrome?
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Which of the following statements about the amygdala is true in the context of emotional processing?
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How do lesions to the amygdala affect fear conditioning?
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Which pathway in fear processing allows for rapid detection of threats?
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What is the relationship between brain activity and emotional experiences?
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Which condition is associated with the inability to recognize fearful facial expressions due to amygdala damage?
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Study Notes
Stress and Health
- Stress is a reaction to threat or harm.
- Chronic psychological stress is most strongly linked to poor health.
- Stress is beneficial in the short-term.
- Stress is maladaptive in the long-term.
The Stress Response
- Stress hormones activate the HPA axis leading to hormone release.
- The sympathetic nervous system is activated in the stress response.
- Brief stressors lead to the release of cytokines, which are involved in inflammation and fever.
Animal Models of Stress
- Early animal models may not have a human equivalent.
- More recent models use social stressors, including subordination stress.
- Subordinate male rats:
- Are more likely to attack juveniles
- Have smaller testes
- Have lower blood testosterone
- Have higher levels of glucocorticoids
Psychosomatic Disorders
- These medical disorders are caused by psychological factors.
- Gastric ulcers are lesions in the stomach lining and duodenum that are more common in stressed individuals.
- While bacteria cause ulcers, stress increases a person's vulnerability to these bacteria.
Psychoneuroimmunology
- This field examines the interaction of psychological factors, the nervous system, and the immune system.
- The immune system protects us from infectious diseases by detecting and identifying antigens.
Immune System Divisions
-
Innate immune system attacks generic classes of pathogens.
- Phagocytes destroy pathogens, release cytokines that trigger inflammatory responses.
-
Adaptive immune system targets specific pathogens identified by their antigens:
- This is the basis of vaccination.
- Cytokines activate lymphocytes (white blood cells).
- Cell-mediated (T lymphocytes)
- Antibody-mediated (B lymphocytes)
Theories of Emotion
- James-Lange (1884): stimulus triggers autonomic/skeletal response which triggers emotion.
-
Cannon-Bard (1915+): stimulus triggers autonomic/skeletal response (emotional expression) and emotion in parallel.
- Appraisal theory: perception > cognitive appraisal > emotion > response.
- Singer-Schacter Theory: perception > general physiological reaction > cognition > emotion
Early Landmarks: Sham Rage
- Decorticated cats (without a cortex) exhibit extreme, unfocused aggression.
- This requires an intact hypothalamus.
- The hypothalamus is responsible for the expression of aggression, while the cortex inhibits and directs responses.
Early Landmarks: Limbic System and Emotion
- Papez (1937) proposed an emotional circuit (limbic system) which includes the hypothalamus.
Early Landmarks: Kluver-Bucy Syndrome (~1939)
- Kluver-Bucy syndrome occurs with bilateral damage to the amygdala.
- Symptoms include:
- Lack of fear
- Urge to put objects in the mouth
- Memory loss
- Hypersexuality
- Visual distractibility
- Placidity
- Emotional blunting
Brain Areas Involve in Emotional Processing
- Amygdala
- Thalamus
- Hypothalamus (physiological & hormonal responses)
- Prefrontal cortex (Orbitofrontal, ACC, Ventral striatum)
- Insula
- Autonomic NS and HPA axis
Emotional Processing
- Diverse regions of the brain interact during emotional processing.
Key Advances in Understanding Brain Mechanisms of Emotion
- Brain activity associated with each human emotion is diffuse.
- Motor and sensory regional activity often accompany emotional responses.
- Brain activity is similar for experienced, imagined, or observed emotions.
The Amygdala
- The amygdala plays a key role in fear and emotional learning.
Fear Conditioning Paradigm
- A neutral stimulus is paired with an aversive stimulus, leading to a conditioned fear response.
The Amygdala and Fear Conditioning
- Lesions to the amygdala block fear conditioning but not the unconditioned response to the aversive stimulus.
- Sensory and thalamic inputs related to the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus converge on the lateral nucleus and induce synaptic plasticity.
Pathways in Fear Conditioning
- Low Road (Be Fast): Fast subcortical pathway via thalamus for rapid detection of threat.
- High Road (Be Sure): Slower cortical pathway for complex analysis of stimuli.
Contextual Fear Conditioning and the Hippocampus
- Pair an aversive stimulus with a context (e.g., a room) instead of a discrete stimulus.
- Bilateral hippocampal lesions:
- Before training: prevents contextual conditioning.
- Shortly after training: blocks retention of contextual fear conditioning.
The Amygdala and Fear Conditioning: Summary
- The lateral nucleus of the amygdala is most critical in conditioned fear.
- The prefrontal cortex inhibits the lateral amygdala, suppressing conditioned fear.
- The hippocampus informs the lateral amygdala about the context of the fear-related event, mediating conditioned fear learning.
- Outputs from the central nucleus regulate defensive behavior and physiological responses.
The Amygdala: Case Study (SM)
- Urbach-Wiethe disease causes specific deficits in identifying and reproducing fearful emotional expressions, but not a conceptual deficit.
Implicit Emotional Learning in Humans: Case Study SP
- Lateral amygdala damage due to lobectomy to relieve epilepsy.
- Unable to recognize fearful facial expressions (like SM).
- Did not acquire a conditioned response in the fear conditioning paradigm.
Skin Conductance Response (SCR)
- Emotional stimuli/situations initiate bodily responses (e.g., sweating) that are measured using a skin conductance response (SCR).
Explicit Emotional Learning
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Interactions between the hippocampus and amygdala.
-
1. Normal indirect emotional responses to stimuli learned explicitly.
- Instruction, observation, experience. -
2. Enhancement of strength of explicit memories for emotional events.
Indirect Emotional Responses to Explicit Learning
- Instructed fear paradigm: The amygdala also plays a role in the indirect expression of the fear response.
Enhancement of Emotional Explicit Memories
- Arousal-induced enhancement of maze learning is blocked by lesions to the amygdala.
- Arousal-induced enhancement can occur after initial encoding.
- Mild arousal enhances explicit memory for emotional events (blocked by amygdala damage).
- Activity in the amygdala is correlated with arousal-enhanced recollection.
- Increased connectivity between the amygdala and hippocampus during recall of emotional memories.
- Flashbulb memories: vivid, detailed memories of emotional events.
The Influence of Emotion on Perception and Attention
- The amygdala enhances attention to emotional stimuli by enhancing early sensory processing via feedback projections to the sensory cortex.
- The attentional blink is reduced when the second of two words is emotional.
- Early sensory areas are activated by phobic stimuli.
- High spider fear is associated with threat-specific attentional hypervigilance, as indexed by enhanced P1 amplitude at occipital electrode sites.
The Influence of Emotion on Decision Making
- Decision making is influenced by emotions, mediated by the OFC.
- OFC damage affects the ability to respond to changing patterns of reward (medial) or punishment (lateral) in the Iowa Gambling task.
The Influence of Emotion on Decision Making: Damasio et al - Somatic Marker Hypothesis
- Changes in physiological arousal to emotional events (e.g., a risky situation) are stored as "somatic markers" in memory.
- Retrieval (or similar situations) reinstates the somatic markers and guides behavior.
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Description
This quiz explores the relationship between stress and health, including the stress response, animal models of stress, and psychosomatic disorders. Learn how stress hormones and psychological factors can impact physical health and behavior. Discover the complexities of stress and its effects on the body.
