Emotion and Cognition

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotion and Cognition • Amygdala and related brain structures

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

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

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

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

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

Phineus Gage

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

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

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

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

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

Emotion and cognition • Human orbitofrontal cortex

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotion and cognition • Social decision making • In terms of Shallice’s SAS model, the perceptual input is not combined with contextual information to select an appropriate response

Supervisory Attentional System Trigger Data Base Perceptual Structures Effector System Contention Scheduling

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 doctor’s table, and perform actions that were socially odd – e.g., came in doctor’s 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 doctor’s butt! (Don’t try to get this through ethics) • Lhermitte dubbed this utilization behavior -- patient’s rely too much on perceptual input to guide behavior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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)

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

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

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

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

Emotion and Cognition