Biological Theories

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Biological Theories

• Rationale
• Papers
• 1. Swanson, L.W. (2000). Cerebral hemisphere
  regulation of motivated behavior. Brain
  Research, 886, 113-164.
• 2. LeDoux, J.E. (1998). The Emotional Brain.
  Chapter 6 A few degrees of separation. New York
  Simon and Schuster.
• 3. Gray, J.A. (1995). A model of the limbic
  system and basal ganglia applications to anxiety
  and schizophrenia. In Gazzaniga, M.S. (Ed.). The
  Cognitive Neurosciences (pp. 1165-1176).
  Cambridge MIT Press.
• 4. Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F. (1998).
  Chapter 5 Goals and behavior. In Authors, On the
  self-regulation of behavior (pp. 10-82). Selected
  Readings. New York, NY Cambridge University
  Press.

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The nature of reality

• Networks of complex causation
• There is far more to reality than you see
• There is far more to reality than you can see

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The world is framed

• Motivation sets goals
• Emotions track progress towards goals
• There is some overlap, because there is no single
  motivation system and no single emotion
  system

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Basic Motivations?

• Hunger
• Thirst
• Pain
• Anger/Aggression
• Play
• Thermoregulation
• Panic
• Play
• Affiliation/Care
• Sexual Desire

• Ingestive
• Defensive
• Reproductive

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Basic Emotions?

• Approach (behavioral activation)
• Curiosity
• Joy
• Hope
• Interest
• Avoidance (behavioral inhibition)
• Anxiety
• Disgust

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Brain Systems
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• Red Rostral
• goals
• Black Caudal
• Exploration

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What is a stimulus?

• An elicitor of behavior
• Any thing or situation
• The thing or situation is given for the
  behaviorist
• Behaviorism is predicated on a naïve realism
• Behaviorists dont really care how the stimulus
  is derived
• The object exists more or less as it manifests
  itself

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What is a reinforcing stimulus or a
reinforcement?

• Any thing or situation whose appearance produces
  an alteration in behavior
• any thing or situation that modifies memory?
• Any thing or situation that produces an emotional
  response (Rolls, 1999)

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Kinds of reinforcement

• Unconditioned (unlearned or primary)
• Conditioned (learned or secondary but not only)

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Unconditioned reinforcement (the pleasant side)

• Rewards
• Animals will work to gain reward (Rolls, 1999)
• Rewards can be associated with otherwise neutral
  stimuli, through association
• classical conditioning
• Rewards increase the probability of behavior
  immediately preceding the reward
• operant conditioning
• Animals will work to gain reward

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Unconditioned reinforcement (the unpleasant side)

• Punishments
• Animals will work to avoid punishment (Rolls,
  1999)
• Punishments can be associated with otherwise
  neutral stimuli, through association
• classical conditioning
• Punishments
• Punishments decrease the probability of behavior
  immediately preceding the reward

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Unconditioned rewards are consummatory, and
produce cessation of consummatory behavior

• remediation for states of deprivation
• water for the thirsty
• food for the hungry
• touch for the lonely
• sexual activity for the sexually deprived
• but also play, in states of relaxation

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Unconditioned rewards produce satisfaction

• most likely mediated by the serotonergic system
• and allow for alternate states of deprivation to
  emerge, and govern behavior

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Sham feeding interrupts consummatory reward

• in this situation, the animal can taste, smell
  and eat the food normally, but the food drains
  from the stomach
• satiety (reduction of appetite) does not occur
  during sham feeding instead rats and monkeys
  continue to eat for often more than an hour when
  they can taste and smell food normally, but food
  drains from the stomach

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• We can conclude that taste and smell, and even
  swallowing food, do not produce satiety. There is
  an important psychological point here reward
  itself does not produce satiety.
• Instead, the satiety for feeding is produced by
  food accumulating in the stomach, and entering
  the intestine
• gastric and intestinal distention
• physiological alterations (blood glucose)
• Rolls, 1999, pp. 9-10

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It is interesting to note that satiety to food is
food specific

• sensory specific
• there is always room for dessert

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• it appears as though cells in the lateral
  hypothalamus respond to food, in states of
  deprivation, but satiety shuts them off
• these cells are more active in states of extreme
  deprivation
• the level of activity of these cells is
  associated with reward valence
• does not shut off cells that respond to taste
  discrimination, however
• Rolls, 1999, p. 12

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Unconditioned punishments are punishment, and
produce extinction, passive avoidance, and
aggression

• stimuli of sufficient intensity to damage the
  receptive system
• loud noises, heat, cold, pressure, tissue damage
• states of deprivation
• including grief
• including time out

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Unconditioned punishments produce pain/hurt,
anger, depression

• mediated in part by opiate systems
• approach aspect dopaminergic

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Conditioned rewards are incentive rewards, and
produce approach behavior

• movement towards stimuli or situations associated
  with consummatory reward
• or associated with other incentive rewards

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Conditioned or incentive rewards produce hope

• may be used to increase the probability of
  preceding behavior
• seeking, curiosity, excitement, please
• most likely mediated by the dopaminergic system

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The incentive aspect of food

• rats, monkeys and humans will work to obtain
  food when they are sham feeding.
• This shows that it is the taste and smell of food
  which provide the immediate reward for
  food-motivated behavior

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Conditioned punishments are threats, and produce
behavioral inhibition (freezing)

• may be used to decrease the probability of
  preceding behavior
• produces cessation of ongoing activity

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Complex stimuli
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Novelty

• cue for punishment
• threat/anxiety
• cue for consummatory reward
• promise/hope

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Absences of expected rewards

• threatening/hope-inspiring (novelty) and
  punishing
• disappointment
• frustration

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Absences of expected punishments

• threatening/hope-inspiring (novelty) and
  rewarding
• relieving

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The role of expectancy and cognition

• anything may stand for a consummatory reward
• partly because of conditioning
• partly because of cognition
• the use of fiction and as if

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Emotion Elicited by Reinforcing Stimuli

• Elicitation of autonomic responses
• Change in heart rate
• Change in endocrine response
• Release of adrenaline
• Prepare the body for motor response
• Projections from the amygdala and orbitofrontal
  cortex
• to the hypothalamus
• To the brainstem autonomic motor nuclei

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Functions of Emotion

• Increased appropriate response to reinforcing
  stimuli
• The emotion as cognitive/motor tendency
• Rather than the response as fixed behavior
• Learning as multi-stage process, with increased
  discrimination of behavior
• Escape, first, to threat/punishment
• Learning of instrumental responses, later, to
  avoid or modify the punishment

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Functions of Emotion, continued

• Communicative
• I am afraid, angry, hurt, happy
• This is all information about the shared
  environment
• This is all information to allow for social
  interchange, and the possibility of mutual
  adaptive regulation

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Functions of Emotion, continued

• Cognitive effects a given mood state can serve
  as a generalized prime for similar thoughts or
  memories
• Perhaps as a kind of specialized retrieval cue
• And as an aid to problem solving
• Perhaps through amygdalic backprojections to the
  cortex
• Perhaps as an aid to the construction of
  different perceptual representations
• The world consists of different things,
  depending on current motivational and emotional
  state

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Functions of Emotion, continued

• By enduring for minutes or longer, it may help to
  produce persistent motivation and direction of
  behavior.

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Neural processing of Emotion

• Brain mechanisms compute the reward value of
  primary reinforcers
• Other brain regions learn associations between
  previously neutral stimuli
• Objects, say, or faces
• With primary reinforcers
• Brain processes object first, then valence

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Neural processing of Emotion, continued

• Once relevant brain areas have calculated valence
• Signal is passed to output regions

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Neural processing, continued

• First Autonomic and endocrine outputs
• Second Unconscious/implicit/habitual actions
• Basal ganglia
• Third Output to brain areas capable of planning
  and rehearsing many steps ahead
• Deferring short term rewards for long term payoff
• Linguistic/cognitive systems (prefrontal)