Emotion and Cognition

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Emotion and Cognition

• Historically emotion and cognition were thought
  to be distinct and separable mental activities
• E.g., Plato proposed that the mind had 3
  separable aspects intellect, will, and emotion

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Emotion and Cognition

• What is emotion
• Controversial question
• Emotions are (Ochsner Gross Handbook of
  emotions)
• 1. Valenced (i.e., good/bad) response to external
  stimulus or internal representation that involves
• 2. result in changes across multiple types of
  responses (behavioral, physiological)

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Emotion and Cognition

• Emotions
• 3. often have identifiable triggers
• 4. both learned (response to a bully) and
  unlearned (withdrawing hand from hot stove)
• 5. mediated by distinct neural systems

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Emotion and Cognition

• Recent focus on emotion comes from cognitive
  neuroscience research, which demonstrated that
  there are specific neural structures (esp.
  Amygdala), that are specialized for processing
  emotional stimuli

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Emotion and Cognition

• Emotions
• Case of S.M. (damage to amygdala)
• S.M. age 42
• Last time S.M. appear to be scared was at the age
  of 10 although she has been physically assaulted
  and held up at knife point
• S.M. has Urbach-Wiethe disease a genetic disorder
  that is progressive
• Leads to degeneration of amygdalae

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Emotion and Cognition

• S.M.
• Neuropsychological tests
• S.M. intelligence in normal range
• No perceptual or motor problems

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Emotion and Cognition

• S.M. performance on tests of emotion
• Impaired in fear identification in set of photos
  normal performance on sadness, anger, disgust,
  happiness, and surprise
• Could sketch facial diagrams showing each emotion
  above except for fear

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Emotion and Cognition

• S.M. performance on tests of emotion
• Studies showed that she understands situations
  that are fearful
• But, this does not appear to prevent her from
  getting involved in fearful situations

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Emotion and Cognition

• Amygdala - small almond-shaped structure, just
  anterior to the hippocampus it is located in
  medial temporal lobe
• Amygdala is specialized in processing emotion
• Amygdala also influences cognitive processes and
  is influenced by cognitive processes
• Thus, both cognition and emotion need to
  considered in context of each other

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Emotion and Cognition

• Amygdala and related brain structures

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Emotion and Cognition

• Basic question are emotions biologically
  hardwired or derived from other more basic causes
• William James argued they were derived or
  assembled from more basic causes
• Charles Darwin argued that certain emotions were
  hardwired

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Emotion and Cognition

• Darwin (1873) The expression of emotion in man
  and animals
• Investigated emotion across cultures and argued
  that the expression of certain emotions through
  facial expression was the same across cultures
• Eckman (1960) investigated cultures around the
  world and discovered that facial expression for
  the following emotions was the same anger, fear,
  disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise

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Emotion and Cognition

• Conclusion this suggests that these emotions are
  innate and that they may be elicited by the same
  brain mechanisms across people

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Emotion and Cognition

• Analyzing emotions
• 1. Basic emotions relatively small set of
  emotions developed through evolution, and
  reflected in facial emotion (e.g., fear, anger,
  happiness)
• 2. Complex emotions combinations of basic
  emotions (e.g., satisfaction) often learned
  socially

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Emotion and Cognition

• Analyzing emotions
• 3. Dimensions of emotions emotions can be
  assessed in terms of
• Valence (pleasant - unpleasant positive -
  negative)
• Arousal assesses the amount of valence

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Phineus Gage
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Phineus Gage

• Computer reconstruction of the path taken by
  tamping iron through skull of Phineus Gage

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Emotion and cognition

• Gage walked away from accident, could describe
  the accident the next day, and within a month was
  deemed able to resume work as a foreman
• It became clear that Gage was no longer Gage
• Prior to injury Gage was a sober, responsible,
  intelligent, home body, with no peculiar or bad
  habits he was a responsible, valued employee
• After injury he was erratic, given to grossest
  profanity, impatient, unwilling to listen to
  advice, and unable to plan effectively
• Tamping iron damaged medial region of prefrontal
  cortex
• Subsequent research has shown that damage to
  frontal lobes can lead to dramatic changes in
  personality while keeping perception,
  consciousness, and most cognitive functions
  intact

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Emotion and cognition

• Neural circuits of emotion
• Emotion is believed to be multifactorial and to
  involve several circuits
• several different types of emotional behaviors
  exist and their expression depends upon the
  specific nature of the task
• several different brain regions are involved in
  emotion
• These include the anterior cingulate,
  hypothalamus, and basal ganglia
• 2 regions primarily involved in emotion are the
  amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex

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Emotion and cognition

• Orbitofrontal cortex
• Forms the base of the prefrontal cortex and is
  adjacent to the upper wall of the orbit above the
  eyes
• Orbitofrontal cortex is broken down into two
  distinct areas the ventromedial prefrontal
  cortex and the lateral orbitofrontal prefrontal
  cortex
• ventromedial prefrontal cortex is one of the
  primary areas damaged in Phineus Gage
• Exact function of orbitofrontal cortex is
  unclear, but it appears to be involved in
  regulating our ability to inhibit, evaluate, and
  act in social and emotional decision making
  situations

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Emotion and cognition

• Human orbitofrontal cortex, divided into the
  lateral orbitofrontal cortex (green) and the
  ventromedial prefrontal cortex (red)

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Emotion and cognition

• Human orbitofrontal cortex

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional learning
• places, persons, locations, and objects have an
  emotional valence or value associated with them
• Valence is usually acquired through emotional
  learning
• Some stimuli are inherently positive or negative
  no learning is involved e.g., shock, very loud
  noise these are referred to as primary
  reinforcers
• Other stimuli are neutral initially but take on a
  positive or negative valence because they have
  positive or negative consequences associated with
  them i.e., the emotional valence is learned
  called secondary reinforcers

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Emotion and cognition

• Fear conditioning
• Fear conditioning used to investigate emotional
  learning of negative valences
• Paradigm with rats
• An initially neutral stimulus (CS conditioned
  stimulus) such as a light is paired with an
  aversive stimulus such as a mild shock (US
  unconditioned stimulus)
• Shock elicits a fear response to shock, called an
  unconditioned response
• With repeated trials the rat learns that the
  light predicts the shock and exhibits a fear
  response to light, called the conditioned response

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Emotion and cognition

• Fear conditioning
• Results show that damage to the amygdala impairs
  conditioned fear responses
• However, damage to the amygdala does not impair
  the fear response indicating that response does
  not depend upon the amygdala
• Thus amygdala is associated with learning or
  memory of fear
• The neural circuit associated with fear learning
  is complex

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Emotion and cognition

• Fear conditioning
• Neural circuit associated with fear learning
• Emotional stimulus (e.g., CS light) seen by eyes
  projects to thalamus then sent (a) to amygdala
  low road and (b) to sensory cortex (e.g.,
  visual cortex) high road for further analysis
• The low road provides quick and dirty crude
  signal to amygdala that a stimulus resembling
  the CS was perceived high road provides a more
  detailed analysis of sensory input, which then,
  if it is CS, is projected back to the amygdala

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Emotion and cognition

• Fear conditioning
• Neural circuit associated with fear learning
• Thus, there are 2 routes of projection to the
  amygdala a fast signal that is susceptible to
  error and a slower route that less error prone
• Advantageous when a danger is present to have
  dual routes
• Information from amygdala projects to regions
  that activate behavioral, autonomic, and
  endocrine (hormone) emotional responses
• It also projects to anterior cingulate and
  ventromedial frontal lobe

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional processing by human to rattlesnake
• Note high and low road routes to amygdala
  autonomic responses (e.g., heart rate) actions
  of hiker modulated by ventromedial frontal
  regions

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional learning and memory
• Neural circuit associated with fear conditioning
  is believed to be an implicit memory system its
  effects are expressed indirectly through a
  behavioral or physiological response though of
  course humans can directly express the response
• However, many emotional memories are believed to
  be implicit and explicit and are mediated by
  different brain regions

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional learning and memory
• Neural circuit associated with fear learning and
  memory
• Phelps (1998) Patient SP had bilateral amygdala
  damage
• Fear conditioning experiment
• SP and controls were presented a blue square and
  during acquisition phase of study, the blue
  square was paired with a mild electrical shock to
  the wrist
• SP and controls showed normal fear response to
  shock as measured by skin conductance response
  (SCR), an autonomic nervous system response
  indicating arousal
• However, SP did not show a conditioned response
  to the conditioned stimulus (blue square)
  presented by itself

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Emotion and cognition

• Aside
• Emotion elicits bodily reactions
• when scared, heart beats faster and we sweat as a
  result of arousal of the autonomic nervous system
• Skin conductance response (SCR) also called
  galvanic skin response (GSR) measures change in
  skin conductance resulting from activity of sweat
  glands hence a measure of arousal

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Emotion and cognition

• Skin conductance response by SP and controls to
  conditioned and unconditioned stimulus

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional learning and memory
• Neural circuit associated with fear learning and
  memory
• SP however, had declarative memory for the
  experimental task and reported that she
  understood the association between the blue
  square and the electrical shock, and anticipated
  being shocked when shown the blue square
• Using the same experimental paradigm, patients
  with hippocampal damage and intact amygdala
  showed the opposite pattern of results i.e.,
  normal autonomic conditioning, but were unable to
  report there was a blue square, or the
  association between the blue square and
  electrical shock
• Conclusion- amygdala necessary for implicit
  expression of emotional learning, but not
  necessary for explicit memory emotional events

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Emotion and cognition

• Social decision making
• Frontal lobes are positioned to combine
  information from a variety of sources because of
  way information from the posterior regions
  projects to the frontal regions
• Thus, it can select what behavior is appropriate
  in a given situation
• The orbitofrontal lobes appear to help in the
  selection of appropriate actions when action is
  based on social cues
• Patients with orbitofrontal lobe damage appear to
  have difficulty taking into account social
  context in their actions relying too heavily on
  perceptual cues, and producing inappropriate
  responses in a social context

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Emotion and cognition

• Social decision making
• In terms of Shallices SAS model, the perceptual
  input is not combined with contextual information
  to select an appropriate response

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Supervisory Attentional System
Trigger Data Base
Perceptual Structures
Effector System
Contention Scheduling
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Emotion and cognition

• Social decision making
• Utilization and imitative behavior
• Lhermitte (1983 1986) showed that px with
  frontal lobe damage tended to rely excessively on
  perceptual input and show imitative and
  utilization behavior
• E.g., px pick up pencil on doctors table, and
  perform actions that were socially odd e.g.,
  came in doctors office where there was a hammer,
  nail, and picture and began to hang the picture
• Or socially inappropriate left hypodermic
  needle in desk, doctor dropped his trousers, and
  turned his back on patient patient pick up
  needle and jabbed it into doctors butt! (Dont
  try to get this through ethics)
• Lhermitte dubbed this utilization behavior --
  patients rely too much on perceptual input to
  guide behavior

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Emotion and Cognition

• Imitative and utilization behaviors
• Imitation. Patient mimics physician making
  threatening gesture

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Emotion and cognition

• Utilization behavior patient when objects are
  placed in front of patient, he or she uses them
  Patient tries to put on 3 pairs of glasses

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional decision making
• Damasio (1994) argued that rational decision
  making depends critically on an emotional
  evaluation of the consequences of an action
• When weighing the consequences of an action we
  need to have an common measuring stick to assess
  the benefits and costs of an action
• This metric was called by Damasio, a somatic
  marker
• Somatic markers are bodily sensations (gut
  feelings) that help us evaluate our feelings
  about a potential action
• Quick process that allows us to assess which
  options we feel most positively about, and they
  allow us to discard options that elicit negative
  feelings

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional decision making
• Test of somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994)
• Provides an account of behavior of px with
  orbitofrontal (and perhaps amygdala) damage
• Such patients understand events and objects that
  are emotionally affective, but they are stripped
  of emotional content (valence) associated with
  them
• Skin conductance response (SCR) experiment
• Purpose to determine whether orbitofrontal px
  have normal SCR to pictures with emotional
  content
• Note these pictures have content by virtue of
  our memories they are not intrinsically arousing
  like a loud noise or electrical shock

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotional decision making
• Test of somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994)
• Px with orbitofrontal damage and controls were
  shown a series of emotional and neutral photos
  SCR was measured
• Results showed that px with orbitofrontal damage
  did not show autonomic emotional response to
  emotional stimuli, unlike controls
• However, both groups showed an autonomic response
  to an intrinsically negative stimulus like a loud
  noise

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• 13.8 Top panel shows examples of neutral (N) and
  Emotional (E) stimuli used in experiment
• Bottom panel shows SCR responses of patients and
  controls

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Consolidation refers to a process by which
  memories become more stable over time, and in
  some cases performance on tasks requiring memory
  improves
• In the case of declarative memories for emotional
  events this process appears to take time and
  occurs through the modulation of hippocampal
  processing during storage not encoding

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Experimental approach to investigate effects of
  amygdala activation on declarative memory
• Investigators disrupted or enhanced amygdala
  processing after memory encoding
• E.g., Study maze learning task with rats (maze
  learning requires hippocampus) after learning
  rats were given drug that induced excitation
  response in amygdala or saline (baseline)
  injection
• Group with elevated amygdala response showed
  better memory for the maze than baseline group
  (Packard Teather, 1998)

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Effects of amygdala activation have also been
  reported for nondeclarative (habit memory) memory
  mediated by the striatal regions (Packard
  Cahill, 2001)

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Experimental approach to investigate effects of
  amygdala activation on declarative memory
• Amygdala enhances hippocampal consolidation
  through activation of the beta-adrenergic system
  in the amygdala (a system that is hormonal
  activated) it has been shown that beta blockers
  that block beta-adrenergic receptors also
  eliminate the effects of arousal on memory
• Note the hormonal changes that affect
  hippocampal consolidation are released during
  emotional arousal in situations of danger.
• it has been proposed that functional purpose of
  this process is to increase chances that stimuli
  that result in an emotional reaction are more
  likely to be not forgotten

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Declarative memory is better for emotional
  arousing stimuli
• Amygdala has a secondary role in declarative
  memory (although a primary role in nondeclarative
  emotional memory)
• Px with amygdala damage did not show an
  arousal-enhanced memory (e.g., La Bar Phelps,
  1998)
• Also there was a correlation between strength of
  an amygdala response to an emotional stimulus at
  encoding and subsequent memory performance as
  measured in a neuroimaging study (e.g., Cahill et
  al., 1996)
• Thus amygdala influences declarative memory but
  medial temporal lobe is critically involved in
  acquisition of declarative memories

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Experimental approach to investigate effects of
  amygdala activation on declarative memory
• Effects of delay on emotional memory
• If arousal affects storage of declarative
  memories via the amygdala, then there should be
  slower forgetting of emotional than neutral
  stimuli
• Kleinsmith Kaplan (1963) presented word-digit
  pairs at study half the words were emotional and
  arousing half were neutral
• At test, words were presented and participants
  recalled the digits participants were tested
  immediately or after 24 hours

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Emotion and cognition

• Emotion and declarative memory
• Kleinsmith Kaplan (1963)
• Results
• On immediate test there was no difference between
  neutral and emotional words
• At 24 hour delay digits paired with emotional
  words were better recalled

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Emotion and Cognition

• Kleinsmith Kaplan (1963)
• Recall of digits paired with emotional or neutral
  words on immediate test or after 24 hour delay

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Case Description of AM

• Successful businessman prior to TBI
• Average to very superior general intellectual
  functioning
• Normal academic, attention, and executive
  function abilities
• Generally intact memory abilities
• Poor social judgment everything is positive

Park et al. (2001) Neuropsychologia
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Neuropsychology of semantic memory

• How are other types of information represented in
  semantic memory?
• Some evidence suggests that evaluative
  information is processed and stored in a
  different location than denotative information

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R. Temporal
Temporal
L. Amygdala
b
a
Amygdala
Frontal
c
d
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Attitude Priming Study of AM

• Purpose to investigate AMs evaluative rating of
  words
• Hypothesis impaired automatic evaluation of
  negative but not positive evaluative stimuli

Park et al. (2001) Neuropsychologia
57
Attitude Priming (continued)

• Method attitude priming paradigm
• Participants AM and 8 age - and education
  -matched controls
• Procedure
• Phase 1 rate single words as good or bad
• hypothesized positivity bias

Park et al. (2001) Neuropsychologia
58
Rating of Words in Phase 1
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Response Latency to Phase 1 Words
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Phase 2
prime (pos or neg) 250 ms
blank screen 50 ms
target (pos or neg)
Task rate target as good or bad as quickly as
possible
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Control Priming Results Phase 2
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AM Priming Results Phase 2
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Summary of Attitude Priming

• Positivity bias in rating single words
• Slowed responses only to words rated as bad
• Priming in positive valence condition only
• Conclusion AM can automatically access positive
  but not negative evaluative information

Park et al. (2001) Neuropsychologia
64
Connotation Generation Study of AM

• Purpose to determine whether AM could access
  negative evaluative information when directed
• Task describe two positive and two negative
  features of single words (e.g., coffee)
• Same 92 words used as primes in Experiment 1

Park et al. (2001) Neuropsychologia
65
Acceptable Good and Bad Connotations
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Semantic priming and AM

• Purpose of experiment
• to determine whether AM would show normal
  semantic priming
• prior research has shown that the latency to
  respond to a target is facilitated when the prime
  preceding the target is semantically related
  compared to when it is unrelated
• Method
• similar to Phase 2 of the first study

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Semantic priming and AM

• Method
• similar to Phase 2 of the first study
• task show prime-then target make a lexical
  decision about target item (word/nonword)

68
Semantic priming and AM
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Conclusions

• Conclusions
• AM impaired in his automatic processing of
  negative evaluative information
• positivity bias
• no priming for negative evaluative words
• AM not impaired in his denotative or semantic
  processing of words
• suggests a dissociation between these two aspects
  of semantic memory