Cognition and Emotion

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Cognition and Emotion

• November 13-20, 2008

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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

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Areas of Inquiry

• Effect of emotion on performance (e.g., memory,
  perception, attention)
• Information processing characteristics of
  emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety, depresion)
• Emotion and social learning
• Cognitive neuroscience of emotions
• cognitive structure of emotion
• neuropsychological studies
• cognitive aspects of emotion (e.g., appraisal)

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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

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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"

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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.

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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 dont just feel angry, happy
  or whatever we experience feelings and then
  decide what they mean.

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Cognitive Appraisal Theory

• In the absence of physiological arousal, we
  decide what to feel after interpreting or
  explaining what has just happened. Two things are
  important in this whether we interpret the event
  as good or bad for us, and what we believe is the
  cause of the event.
• In primary appraisal, we consider how the
  situation affects our personal well-being. In
  secondary appraisal we consider how we might cope
  with the situation.

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Somatic Marker Theory

• 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

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TRADITIONAL MODEL
Personality Traits
Emotional Processing
Mood States
MEDIATOR MODEL
Personality Traits
Mood States
Emotional Processing
MODERATOR MODEL
Personality Traits
Mood States
Emotional Processing
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Limbic System
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Fear Conditioning
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Davis Cortical influences on basic startle
pathway
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Davis Role of the amygdala in conditioned fear
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LeDoux direct thalamo-amygdala connections,
bypassing cortex
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Preattentive Perception of Threat Öhman

• Distinction between automatic v. controlled
  information processing
• Draws on animal work (LeDoux) - direct
  thalamic-amygdala connection
• Threat biological and derived
• Data
• responses to masked stimuli
• slowed RT to threat words in shadowing

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Ohmans Information-Processing Model for Fear
and Anxiety
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Emotion and Memory
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Bambi (1942) named 20 in Times 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.
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Flashbulb Memories

• Distinct, vivid, recollections of shocking
  events, and associated personal activities
• Long-lasting? Accurate? Special?
• Brown Kulick (1977) special encoding mechanism
  (NOW PRINT!)
• Niesser Harsh (1992) Challenger study
• Although FM appear to be different subjectively
  (they provide an intersection between personal
  history and History), they are not necessarily
  more accurate
• Confidence is not equivalent to accuracy

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Flashbulb Memories of September 11, 2001

• http//www.nyu.edu/about/video.spotlight.html

http//people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageI
D632
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Challenger Disaster Study (Neisser)
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Bowers Network Theory a theory of emotional
experience

• Emotions are nodes in a semantic network
• Emotions stored as propositions
• Emotion activation of network
• Activation spreads in selective fashion to
  associated concepts
• When nodes activated above threshold level,
  conscious experience of emotion results

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Four Predictions from Bowers Theory

• Mood-state-dependent recall
• Mood congruity learning best when congruity
  between learners state and type of material
  (best supported)
• Thought congruity thoughts, associations
  congruent with mood state
• Mood intensity increases in intensity (arousal)
  lead to greater activation of network

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Mood Effects on Attention and Memory

• Negative memory bias
• found with depressed and anxious normals
• not consistently found with anxious patients
  (active avoidance?)
• Mood vs. emotion
• Effects on processing capacity (resources
  allocated to self-talk)

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Emotion and Attention
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Emotional Stroop
BOY BLOOD TABLE GASH NICE TREE
PUS DOG ELBOW LACERATE RIVER GUTS
CHURCH
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GUILTY
CANDY
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Basis of Dot Probe Results

• Selective attention to threat (McLeod)
• Failure to disengage attention from threat
  (Koster, et al 2004)

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Weapon Focus

• Eyewitness inability to identify a perpetrator
  when a weapon is used in a crime
• Easterbrook hypothesis narrowing of attentional
  focus in emotional situations
• Arousal and central/peripheral detail

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Basis of Weapon Focus

• Simple selective attention
• All items attended to equally, but weapon
  remembered better
• Cue-utilization (threat-arousal-narrowing)
• Unusualness/distinctiveness

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Attention/Memory in Anxiety and Depression
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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

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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 (more local
  spotlight)
• Interpretive bias interpreting ambiguous
  materials as threatening (e.g., The doctor
  examined little Emilys growth)
• Anxiety and preattentive processing

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Depression

• Little evidence for attentional bias in
  depression
• Interpretive/recall biases in depression
• Interpreting ambiguous situations as negative
• Reduced predictions of success on cognitive tasks
• Recall of past performance reduced

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Siegle, 1999
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Time Course of Attentional Bias in Depression
Siegle et al (2001)
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Discrete v. Dimensional Theories of Emotion
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Discrete Emotions Theory

• Emotions are distinct and unique states (e.g.,
  fear, anger, etc.)
• Basic or primary emotions - Tomkins lists 8
  (hap, sad, anger, fear disgust, surprise,
  interest, shame)
• Search for response patterning in emotions
  (Friesen, Ekman, etc.)
• Cross-cultural comparisons

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Basic Elements of Discrete Emotions Theory
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Bioinformational Theory (Lang)

• Emotions as action predispositions
• Dimensional view of emotions
• affective valence (appetitive-aversive dimension)
• arousal (resource recruitement)
• Link between emotional and motivational behavior

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Discrete v. Dimensional Models (Christie, 2002)
P
A
W
N
Activation v. Approach/Withdrawal
Activation v. Valence
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Neuropsychological Findings

• Neuropsychological studies of affective
  competence (RHD)
• Modular organization of affective systems (?)
• Modality-independent affective lexicon
• Valence-related asymmetries

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Emotion and the Brain Three General Hypotheses

• Right Hemisphere dominance for emotion
• Hemispheric laterality for mood
• Positive/approach left hemisphere
• Negative/withdrawal right hemisphere
• Automatic-controlled distinction (RH v. LH

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Negative - Neutral
Positive - Neutral
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Localized Damage and Emotion

• Awakening from WADA
• Right Hemisphere crying, anxiety
• Left Hemisphere laughing, excitement
• Acute Structural Lesion (stroke)
• Right Hemisphere indifference, ?secondary mania
• Left Hemisphere depression (frontal)

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Neuropsychiatric Disorders

• Depression
• Secondary Mania
• OCD
• Anxiety
• Aggression/disinhibition
• Psychopathy/APD

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Neuropsychological Manifestations of Frontal Lobe
Lesions II Inferior Mesial Region A) Orbital
Region (10, 11) Lesions in this region produce
disinhibition, altered social conduct, acquired
sociopathy, and other disturbances due to
impairment in fronto-limbic relationships B)
Basal Forebrain (posterior extension of inferior
mesial region, including diagonal band of Broca,
nucleus accumbens, septal nuclei, substantia
innominata) Lesions here produce prominent
anterograde amnesia with confabulation (material
specificity present, but relatively weak)
Tranel, 1992
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Neuropsychological Manifestations of Frontal Lobe
Lesions III Lateral Prefrontal Region
(8,9,46) Lesions in this region produce
impairment in a variety of executive skills
that cut across domains. Some degree of
material-specificity is present, but relatively
weak. A) Fluency impaired verbal fluency
(left) or design fluency (right) B) Memory
impairments defective recency judgment,
metamemory defects, difficulties in memory
monitoring C) Impaired abstract concept
formation and hypothesis testing D) Defective
planning, motor sequencing E) Defective
cognitive judgement and estimation
Tranel, 1992
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Neuropsychological Manifestations of Frontal
Lesions I Frontal Operculum (44,45,47) A) Left
Brocas aphasia B) Right expressive
aprosodia Superior Mesial (mesial 6, 24) A)
Left akinetic mutism B) Right akinetic
mutism Bilateral lesions of mesial SMA (6) and
anterior cingulate (24) produce more severe form
of akinetic mutism
Tranel, 1992
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Phineas Gage (1823-1861, accident in 1848)
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Phineas Gages lesion reconstructed (H. Damasio
and R. Frank, 1992)
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Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex and Somatic Markers

• Somatic marker biasing signals are regulated by
  VM premotor cortex these signals help regulate
  decision-making in uncertainty
• Support from Iowa Gambling Task anticipatory
  SCRs to selection of unfavorable decks
• Impaired in VMPFC

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Iowa Gambling Task
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Actual Body Actions
Expected Body Actions (Internal Model)
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Problems with SMT

• Assertion that IGT preferences formed
  implicitly is untenable
• Meaning of psychophsyiological response is
  unclear (response to feedback, risk indicator,
  post-decision emotion reaction)
• Not all normal controls are normal

(Dunn et al., Neurosci Biobehav Reviews, 2006,
30, 239-271)
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Mirror Neuron System

• Class of neurons in F5 (BA 44) and ventral
  premotor cortex that discharge both
• when animal performs object-directed action
• when animal observes OD action in others
• Subset appear to be communicative motor neurons
• Functions
• Imitation
• Action understanding
• Potentially important for understanding social
  learning and imitation effects
• Being investigated in social-emotional
  impairments such as autism, Aspergers disorder,
  and schizophrenia
• May be important in empathy

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Cortical-Subcortical Interactions in Emotion

• General concept of limbic system as emotional
  effector
• Question is, what is the limbic system?
• Regulatory interaction between cortex and
  subcortical structures
• Gating
• Selective engagement

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General Organization of Frontal
cortical-striatal-pallidal-thalamic-cortical loops
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Blumenfeld, 2002
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Orbitofrontal Loop

• Involved in social and emotional functioning
• Damage produces
• Disinhibition
• Hyperactivity
• Emotional lability
• Aggressiveness
• Reduced self-awareness