Cognitive Neuroscience Lecture 20: Emotion

L20: Emotion

Emotion

-         Basic emotions (facial expressions)

-         Dimension of emotion: reaction to events

Basic emotions: Facial expressions

-         Darwin thought they should be adaptive & coincide w/ unique exp

-         Relevant evidence from facial exp

Task/conditions: observers from different cultures

Results: high agreement for anger, happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness, fear

Confounding from literacy? Nope, even new guinea illiterates could comprehend

'''Ekman’s universal facial expressions'''

Origin of emotion: patterns of muscle & nerve behavior developed in ancestors

-         Basic emotions across genders and cultures

James thought perceptionàbody changesàemotion

ANS: sympathetic exit middle, parasympathetic exit lower

Cannon & bard found problems with James-Lange theory:

-         Body-brain info cut off does not prevent emotional behavior

-         ANS responds the same across multip le states; differences in emotional states != different phys response

-         Physical changes are too slow to be the basis to emotional response

-         Artificial supply of hormones not enough for emotion

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-         Sensory perception of stim/eventàthalamusàcortex and hypothalamusàcortex combines info from thalamus with hypothalamus to create emotion; ALSO, hypothalamusàANSàaction

-         Fibers reach cortex and the ANS at same time; emotion and phys happen at same time

Schachter and Singer:

-         Non-emotional explanation to physical arousal can prevent emotional experience

-         '''Physical is not enough to create emotion; emotion is result of phys arousal and cognitive labeling'''

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But in the real world, you don’t get phys arousal outside lab

Schacter and singer is kind of irrelevant

Instead: