The Feeling Brain

Ethics and Emotions

2007-04-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

The connection between morals and emotions is surprisingly strong. As Joshua Greene wrote in his article, “How (and where) Does Moral Judgment Work?”, emotion is a significant aspect in moral judgment. There is now neuro-imaging and fMRI testing that can support the correlation and studies on pre-frontal cortex damage in children and adults is also discovering the connection between morality and emotions. Antonio Damasio continues his exploration into prefrontal damage by defining acquired sociopathy. Damasio talks about how when there is damage in the prefrontal cortex, there is also emotional disturbance on multiple levels: decreased emotional reactions, compromising of social emotions, poor planning of everyday activities, and poor management o human relationships. There is no disorder in perception, movement, conventional memory, language, and general reasoning ability, only within the social emotional behavior. Why is it that there is this onset of sociopath-like behavior? A section of the prefrontal cortices is meant for making social and moral decisions and also plays a part in acquiring knowledge to create morals. So, morals and ethics have a foundation in the neurological functions that are connected to the genesis of emotions. Like when Damasio was discussing Phineas Gage in his book, Descartes’ Error, Greene also discusses how people suffering from prefrontal damage have social knowledge intact, but are unable to use it within real-life situations. Their basic decision making skills become based on a logic that lacks emotional reasoning.

The amount of damage done on one’s emotional and moral connections also depends on whether or not the prefrontal damage was done during childhood or adulthood. Early prefrontal damage is far more serious than in adult prefrontal damage because children never learn the social and moral rules that they are violating whereas adults do have that knowledge. Adults are able to create emotional signals that can guide the decision-making process based on past successful experiences. Children do not have these memories to rely on, but both children and adults modify the settings of the network as a result of new experiences. Their social behavior becomes impaired because of their lack of moral analysis within social settings because the knowledge of moral norms is completely deficient within children with prefrontal damage.

As Greene says, moral reasoning matters within social contexts and findings within the world of social psychology support that. People evaluate others and apply stereotypes to others automatically based on moral reasoning. When someone is motivated to maintain a relationship and defend their ideas these will bias one’s judgments and help to motivate future reasoning. People are also willing to sacrifice material interests, time and physical integrity in order to defend their societal causes, principles and ideologies. Morality has the ability to promote cooperation and helping but is also capable of creating hostility among individuals and social groups. People are constantly challenging others’ values and ideologies to defend their own moral reasoning in life.

When looking at how those with prefrontal damage are unable to achieve moral or emotional competence within social situations, there is understanding to why they cannot succeed at life. If emotions and morality are connected and influenced by one another, then one cannot succeed in society without them. Morals have to have an emotional connection because we live so strongly by them and morals are created from experiences that we analyze with our emotions. The judgment that takes place within social settings is largely based on what “feels right” or not. How can that be recreated for someone with prefrontal damage? How can someone who has had prefrontal damage since childhood achieve a moral lifestyle? Is there any way to help their memories relearn moral cues if we cannot recreate emotions to support the moral judgments?

Moral cognition and neuroethics

2007-04-27T18:47:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings focused on moral cognition and neuroethics. I thought that Greene and Haidt’s article “How (and where) does Moral Judgment Work?” approached the endless and repetitive questions of moral psychology from a clear and progressive prospective. They recognize that the historical view of analyzing moral judgments juxtaposed emotion and reason, and that this is unproductive. Greene and Haidt are continuing to advance the new field of neuroethics, suggesting that both reason and emotion are involved with moral decision-making, but that perhaps emotions engage in a more dominant role, which is opposite of traditional theories. They compare Damasio’s studies of Phineas Gage with more recent studies of similar brain damaged patients, referring to their inability to effectively use ‘somatic markers.’ Although these patients were able to pass regular IQ tests and showed knowledge of social/moral circumstances, they failed at playing the Iowa Gambling Test and their real-life actions proved disastrous. This shows what we have already learned (especially from Damasio): to know is not to KNOW (or act upon), information is not instinct. Green and Haidt write: “Their affective deficits render them unable to feel their way through life, which suggests that normal decision making is more emotional and less reasoned than may have believed” (518).

They also discussed patients with early childhood prefrontal damage who exhibited strong signs of egocentric, immoral behavior. They tested the same as adults except that their knowledge of moral norms was undeveloped because they weren’t old enough to learn and store that knowledge. Were the children’s actions more immoral than the adult patients? If so, does this have to do with the amount of stored moral and social knowledge? If it does, how does that work if the adults with prefrontal damage have the knowledge stored but do not use it—does just having the knowledge make them somehow less outwardly immoral—do remnants of their ‘old personalities’ seep into their everyday decisions even after brain damage occurs? This also raising questions for me concerning sociopaths. I’m assuming Green and Haidt are referring to children who literally had damage done to their brain like Gage, but what about strictly environmentally produced prefrontal damage—is this possible? Assuming that ‘true’ sociopaths come to be from environmental circumstances, do they develop prefrontal damage over time? What circumstances produce this outcome, opposed to other possible diseases and mental illnesses? Greene ad Haidt touch on this when they note that case studies of people who have exhibited violent criminal behavior have been abused as children and/or also have frontal damage. Damasio also touches on this in his article “Neuroscience and Ethics: Intersections.” He refers to adults with brain damage has having ‘acquired sociopathy,’ while early onset patients also have ‘acquired sociopathy,’ but combined with a developmental factor.

An important point that Hauser makes in his article “The Liver and the Moral Organ” is about language. We cannot forget the relationship between culture, environment, reason, emotion, and language. Hauser writes: “We are endowed with a moral faculty that operates over the casual-intentional properties of actions and events as they connect to particular consequences. We posit a theory of universal moral grammar which consists of the principles and parameters that are a part and parcel of this biological endowment. Our universal moral grammar provides a toolkit for building possible moral systems. Which particular moral system emerges reflects details of the local environment or culture, and a process of environmental pruning whereby particular parameters are selected and set early in development” (2). We must also keep in mingd that language itself has divided emotion and reason and morality, but it seems like what we are finally coming to realize, is that these three words and meanings are intrinsicly linked together.

Stress, control and well-being

2007-04-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings focus primarily on the degree of impact environment has on both mental and physical illnesses/dysfunctions. To what degree can our emotional and physical well-being be influenced by self-control and environment? And to what degree is it predetermined?
Gross speaks of emotion-regulation and of how people manage their emotions. He is saying that we have the ability to regulate our emotions, to choose our ‘emotional battles’ for what’s better in the long run, and to modulate emotion to “optimize human functioning.” While I agree with him to a certain degree, ideally, I agree with Adler and co. in stating that emotional well-being is largely determined by our perception of control and resources available to us to alleviate our concerns.
Adler and co. believe that well-being is heavily shaped by environmental factors. Socio-economics have an alarming influence on wellbeing. It has been shown that people of lower socioeconomic standing and lower hierarchal positions demonstrate more “mortality and morbidity,” and often have less control and opportunity in ameliorating their situation. Education, living conditions, access to health care, levels of stress and mobility all have an influence on physical and mental health. Thus, poverty and social standing (which is more often than not determined at birth) can strongly determine a person’s predispositions.
It is not to say, that do not have different levels of emotions. Some of us, like Kabbaj’s rats, are HR while others are LH. However, he stresses, “Behavior depends on the environmental conditions, the stressor severity and the animal’s coping mechanisms,” (1010). In turn, our behavior often reflects and is exemplified by neurological blueprints for our behavior, in this case: differing levels of 5-HT, glutocorticoid receptors, decreased D2 receptors and increased D1 receptors.
Just as neurological activity reflects behavior in rats, they do so also in humans. The inability for autistic kids to rely on their intuition and their engagement in slow deliberation may be reflective of neurological structures. In Allman & co’s article, they found that VENS might be partially responsible for the defective intuition that autistic kids often have. They are found mostly in the right hemisphere and may be related to the right-hemisphere dominant social-emotion localization. Here, behavior reflects neurological patterns too the connections of ACC and FI might be irregular in autism).
In the Lerner article, facial displays of emotions (James, Ekman), subjective accounts, and physiological response to stressors are measured. Those who displayed fear had higher cardiovascular and cortisol stress responses, whereas those with disgust/anger did not. Control of the situation and level of certainty affected the subjects’ states (as in autistic kids and socioeconomic discussion). It is, "healthier" to be angry than fearful... (perhaps because one exhibits more perception of control than the other and many disorders are anxiety-based). Who knows.
Kandel discusses how psychiatry, since WWII, has been a “therapeutic art,” and has had little focus on biology. Our gene expression (not template) is highly influenced by life’s forces. Kandel stresses that all psychiatry is biological, resulting in neurological/synaptical changes in the brain’s structure. Thus, contrary to popular belief, genes and brain activity can be ‘learned’, be modified, and be susceptible to social and behavioral influences. Psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacology, together, change the patterns of action and level of neurological activity in our brains. Therefore, the marriage of brain science, psychology and sociology show promising advances in each respective field.
From anxiety to anger to autism to schizophrenia and depression, all behavioral demonstrations have a neurological and structural basis. We need not always rely on drugs, however, because conversation and other stimulating activity changes the nature of the neurological pathways. All articles reflect James’ idea of emotion in one way or another and explain the adaptive, biological drive for emotion and its regulation. Our ‘higher-order’ processes and (i.e. VENS) have developed in relatively recent years and have late emergence in phylogeny and ontology. These neurological developments shape our emotions and are shaped by our emotions.

Emotions, Stress, and Health

2007-04-24T01:46:00.000-05:00

The topic of stress, emotions, and their impact on health could not have been more timely. As the end of the semester quickly approaches, stressors are unusually high and many may be finding their emotional thresholds to be wearing thin. However, if you have been able to overcome this emotion/stressed induced paralysis enough to process this weeks readings, you may find yourself armed with a useful understanding of how psychological and social factors affect the way we perceive things and ultimately our health.

Stressors that are for the most part universal are not necessarily interpreted in a universal manner. A specific stressor can induce different types of negative emotions from fear to anger to disgust. The study described in the article “Facial Expressions of Emoition Reveal Neuroendocrine and Cardiovascular Stress Responses” demonstrated that a stressor can evoke different physiological changes depending on how the stressor is perceived. Subjects in this experiment were given stress-inducing tasks. Their facial behavior (expression of emotion) was recorded and assessed using the EMFACS Facial Action Coding System. In order to test for physiological correlates of the stress induced emotions, data regarding the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis (by measuring cortisol levels in saliva) and cardiovascular activity were collected. As the authors predicted, the greater the individual’s facial response was of fear, the greater was the HPA axis and cardiovascular activity. Conversely (this is the part that may be of particular use this time of the year), HPA axis and cardiovascular activity decreased in the individuals that expressed anger or disgust in response to the stressors. In their discussion the authors suggested a future study investigating a possible relationship between facial muscles and the stress response system.

Although through a different approach, the article on facial feedback and race bias (which happened to be published around the same time) actually considers the relationship between facial muscle activation/motor processes and the way on evaluates a stimulus. The researchers sought to understand if different physical conditions could effect one’s evaluation of a stimulus. A very creative and impressive approach was taken to test their hypothesis. Throughout the process, subjects held a pencil between their teeth without letting their lips touch the pencil. Unknowingly to the subjects, holding the pencil in this way forced a smile. Using the concept of ‘the spreading attitude affect’ the subjects were indirectly conditioned. Ultimately, this study demonstrated that certain motor process associated with emotion and affect (i.e. smiling) can influence the way an individual will evaluate a stimulus. I am unsure why they researchers chose to use racial bias to show that we can be indirectly conditioned to assign new meaning on a categorical level. Are they suggesting that we should condition people to overcome racial bias?

The article on socioeconomic status (SES) and health provides another perspective on the relationship between physical state, stress, and health. There is a strong correlation between SES and health throughout the entire spectrum. The authors discuss factors that seem to influence this gradient. In this regard, I found the article to be a bit outdated. (The most recent article in their bibliography was from 1993 and I think our understanding of that factors are a bit different now.) The studies they used to identify a relationship between SES and health considered level of education and level of occupation, but did not take into account lifestyle variables that may accompany occupation (stress, time demands of job, effort reward imbalance, high demands and low control, adverse psychosocial environments –it is understandable how such conditions could induce a state of chronic stress and ultimately take a toll on ones mental/physical health). A number of issues that seem to be critically influential factors in this gradient were not mentioned, or only mentioned as suggestions for the future.

As the article on facial expression and emotion demonstrated a stressor can be perceived in multiple ways, and some ways may be healthier than others. I have spent this semester fixated on the concept of emotion regulation (or controlling one’s emotions). It can be very difficult to maintain a sense of reason when the stressors pile up, so remember, control your anger (and by control I mean make sure you respond with anger, not fear) it is healthier for you…

Response 4.22.07

2007-04-23T12:18:00.001-05:00

This week our readings have shed light on human’s ability to regulate their own emotions, and also on the different connections between emotions and health, both physical and psychological. The first article about emotion regulation by James Gross was titled an “Integrative Review” because the author used the pages to stress the importance of the fact that emotion regulation spans many domains and is multi-faceted. First of all, Gross explains the distinction between emotions, emotion episodes, and moods. An emotion, in his view, is a fleeting feeling, generated by an emotional cue, evaluated, evokes an emotion response tendency, gets modulated, and becomes an emotion response. An emotion episode, however, includes “plots”, and “scripts”, and occurs over a generally longer period of time. They include all the events that unfold that contribute to an “emotional scene”. A mood, then, is a seemingly more relaxed, general state, subject to fluctuation. Gross describes moods as being “diffuse”, biasing “cognition more than they bias action”.

Because people spend most of their adult lives regulating their emotions, curtailing them to different social and professional scenes, Gross believes it’s imperative that we understand the intricacies of emotion regulation. Within the psychoanalytic tradition, there are two modes of emotion regulation: “problem-focused” coping, which is aimed at solving the problem, and “emotion-focused” coping, with the goal of decreasing the experience of negative emotion. Both the experience of emotion and their expression may be regulated, and both positive and negative emotions can be regulated. The process can be either automatic or controlled, for instance when someone has learned that in certain social situations or with certain people different displays of emotion are appropriate and others are not, and therefore don’t have to think about regulating them, but it comes automatically, perhaps through conditioned social cues. Gross describes in details the processes of regulation, which occur at different stages during an event. They are: situation selection, situation modulation, attention deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation.

These processes work to change the way people think about their emotional state, and also alter their expression of the emotions they feel. I think it’s important to observe that although we may regulate our expression of emotion, it does not necessarily change our experience of emotion. A lot of cases of depression and anxiety are due to the misalignment of emotion experience and emotion expression.

The Intuition and Autism article by Allman et al described the Von Economo neurons (VENs) which develop in a person between the ages of one to four years old which are involved in our early judgment/intuitive feelings of people and situations. The right hemisphere is specialized for social situations, and it is in this hemisphere where VENs are found. The authors of this article were specifically looking at the effect of a lack of VENs in autistic individuals, whose difficulties include impaired ability to interact in social situations. They believe that VEN development is impaired in autistic children, especially owing to early development period of the neurons.

Eric Kandel’s article “A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry” described the evolution of psychoanalysis up until the present, and the different stages and influences it has had since. Psychoanalysis used to have an aversion to neuro science because neuro science was considered to be faulty, and therefore a merger wasn’t considered to be a necessary step. The 1960’s were a turning point for psychoanalysis, however, with the use of pharmacological drugs in conjunction with psychiatric intervention. Kendal’s main point in the paper is to stress the importance of the union between psychiatry and biology, stating that he hopes that in the near future biological and psychiatric practice will so heavily intertwined that psychiatrists will be almost as knowledgeable about the biology of the brain as neurologists. He hopes for a “rapprochement”, where people will realize more fully that “all functions of the mind reflect functions of the brain”, and that there are critical biological explanations and underpinnings for all social actions. He also points to the misuse of scientific/biological information, which is also a very important thing to note.

The Alder et al article about socioeconomic status and health described the overlooked intricacies of SES, and delineated its multi-faceted nature. They described it as a major risk factor, especially when all its factors are taken into consideration. One of the main points made about SES and health was the influence of years of education on health later in life. “The more years of education, the lower is the ratio of observed to expected deaths”. Education is also a factor in the rates of disease. One possible explanation is the “drift hypothesis”, where illness influences SES, rather than SES on illness. This could be an explanation because when someone has a debilitating illness, it may hinder his or her ability to work, which in turn makes it harder to pay for proper health care. Another explanation is that SES affects biological processes that, in turn, influence health status. Along these lines, individual health behaviors also play a role, such as smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet, and substance abuse. The authors also took into consideration the impact of stress on SES and health, noting that generally people with a higher SES encounter less negative events that would generate stress, and also they have more outlets and means of dealing with whatever stress comes about. People with a lower SES generally have less access to social and psychological resources to cope with stressful events, and “thus are more susceptible to subjective experience of stress”.

Lerner et al also discussed the issue of stress in their article “Facial Expressions of Emotion Reveal Neuroendocrine and Cardiovascular Stress Response”. Looking specifically at fear responses and anger/disgust responses, they found that fear displays were related to elevated cortisol (a stress hormone) levels. In anger/disgust displays, however, there were lower levels of cortisol present. When an individual displayed anger/disgust when subjected to a stressful situation, the researchers assumed that the lower levels of cortisol, and lower stress level, were due to the fact that anger and disgust responses are typically associated with asserting control over the situation, thereby reducing the amount of stress felt. In fear, however, the stress level is higher because the individual displaying fear feels out of control of the situation, and therefore holds a pessimistic view of the outcome. In anger/disgust display individuals, the foreseen controllability and/or predictability of the situation reveals a more optimistic outlook.

Emotions and Health

2007-04-23T01:15:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings addressed how social and cultural meanings interact with physiology and effect health.

The Neurobiological Bases of Individual Differences in Emotional and Stress Responsiveness tried to understand how the neurochemical substrates of stress effect behavior and temperament in rats. Rats were characterized as either high locomotor response (HR) or low locomotor response (LR) based on their behavior when encountering a novel environment. HR rats generally display more curiosity in new environments and are more likely to self administer drugs than LR. Although HR rats appear less anxious in new situations, they actually release high levels of glucocortocoids during these times. I wondered how the levels of glucocortocoids differed between the HR and LR rats, since it wasn’t made clear in the paper. Interestingly, after being socially isolated for a week HR rats behaved like LR rats in anxiety experiments, illustrating the profound effect of social support on stressful experiences. In general, I was very confused about the role of glucocortocoids in the differences in anxious behavior between the LR and HR. Do glucocortocoids directly regulate anxious behavior?

Socioeconomic Status and Health: The Challenge of the Gradient presented a correlation between socioeconomic status and health. Socioeconomic satus influences nearly every aspect of life, including physical and social environment, education, and health behaviors, which, in turn, affect the biological functions that determine health. Adler et al. also note that the SES gradient is highly correlated with the amount of psychological stress in an individual’s life. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status tend to have greater exposure to more negative experiences and also have less access to coping resources, and are therefore more susceptible to the subjective experience of stress. “Poverty, and the poor health of the poor, is about much more than simply not having enough money…it is also about your psychological interactions with society at large and how readily society registers your existence.” (Robert Sapolsky 1998; 307).

The Feeling of Feeling in Control and its Health Benefits

2007-04-22T23:38:00.001-05:00

The overarching theme of the readings for this week is the body/mind connection. Eric Kandel discusses how social experiences influence our gene expression and the very concrete biological results of our gene expression dictate our behavior. James Gross describes the way that emotion regulation is not a top down process but rather a bi-directional process where a well-functioning body and mind fine-tune in response to one another, in the service of meeting an individual’s goals.

One issue touched on in a few of the readings that really caught my attention is the idea of “feeling” in control. This is a feeling we haven’t talked about much so far but the Lerner et al reading suggests that it may play a very important role in how we experience stress psychologically and physically. The Adler et. al. reading proposes that it may be a large factor in the SES gradient, influence our health outcomes. James Gross discusses the concept of emotional regulation, a mechanism for maintaining control of one’s organism.

Individual, interpersonal and cultural/societal dimensions of feeling in control are highlighted by three different readings: 1. The internal feeling for an individual of having an experience of a stimuli and a response to it involves processing responses effectively and being able to respond with her goals and intentions in mind rather than being distracted by her physical or emotional state (as discussed in the James Gross reading;) 2. the feeling in a social sense of being in control as in feeling like one is not afraid of someone pressuring them, that one is not at risk and has choices (Lerner et al;) 3. the feeling of control in a meta-social sense, in the sense of social status--being dominant in one’s social group and having all the necessary resources to see out one’s choices (Adler et. al). [I don’t know if these categories really work but certainly there are different aspects of feeling in control.]

Feeling in control may be key in reducing psychological and physiological response to a stressful situation, keeping in check the toll stress takes on an individual’s body and emotional resources. In “Facial Expressions of Emotion Reveal Neuroendocrine and Cardiovascular Stress Responses,” the authors look at differences in stress reactivity and find that stress is a negative experience that elicits different responses in different people, manifesting different physiological responses. They argue that stress may be more specifically characterized by sub-emotions--in this experiment, fear or anger and disgust. Those subjects who responded with fear were experiencing, they say, a sense of greater risk and of low control and showed more physiological signs of stress, higher levels of cortisol, high heart rates and stronger facial expression than those experiencing anger or indignation. As LeDoux points out, during stressful experiences “weak conditioned fear responses” may become stronger. People who have experienced fears in the past may find that, though unrelated to the current situation, these fears resurface when they are in a stressful situation. On the other hand, subjects who expressed anger and indignation assessed the situation as involving less risk, felt more in control, and demonstrated less intense physiological signs of stress. The authors of this study cite other studies where anger and indignation are correlated with appraisals of certainty and control. Feeling certain and in control in response to a stressful stimuli leads subjects to feel like they are experiencing less risk and so they exhibit less intense biological stress responses. For example, in situations where rats can control when a stressor occurs, they exhibit fewer biological stress responses. As LeDoux describes, the problem with experiencing the stronger stress response is that eventually having high levels of cortisol in one’s system takes a toll and lowers one’s threshold for anxiety disorders and perhaps other conditions. This is an example of Kandel’s idea that our experiences ultimately shape us biologically. In conclusion, the authors suggest future study into how an individual’s pessimistic versus optimistic evaluation may influence affective disorders and health outcomes. This ties these findings to the positive psychology idea of trying to identify what is helpful coping and understand how people can cultivate it.

In “Socioeconomic Status and Health,” Adler’s et. al. discuss the factors that may be behind what they call the SES gradient, the way that higher SES status is associated with better health outcomes. After thoroughly discussing the variables that should be considered and ruling out many, they theorize that “a broader underlying dimension of social stratification or social ordering is the potent factor (p. 1095.)” In the section, “Discussing Effects of Social Ordering, ” they discuss studies of animals in which biological factors that correlate to social status have health implications. They cite studies by Sapolsky, 1989 in which subordinate wild baboons were found to have decreased levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is a protective factor in coronary heart disease. Sapolsky has also found correlations between social rank and cortisol levels, gonadal steroids and immune function and other scientists studying an African fish have found similarly different biological development in submissive males. The authors conjecture that responses to hierarchical position may be genetically encoded and “hierarchical position may also have direct effects on physiological processes and neuroanatomic structures which may in turn influence an individual’s biologic vulnerability to agents of disease (p.1103.)” This fits with Kandel’s point that social interactions shape the brain, as social interactions may well be part of what determines genetic expression of traits associated with dominance/submissiveness.

Social status seems in some ways to be a very primal assessment and it appears that some of us care about it more than others. Is status assessed consciously and/or unconsciously? What are the mechanisms of how we make and weigh these assessments and how do they affect us biologically?

Adler’s et. al end their article by pointing out the complexity of intertwined factors involved but write” The concept of individual control over existing life circumstances, for example, might be a higher order variable that synthesizes or renders coherent a number of the factors reviewed here (p. 1006.)” They then conjecture that individuals higher on the socio-economic scale may have “more opportunity to influence the events that affect their lives’ (p. 1106) compared with people at lower levels.

I wonder about all the internal and external factors that contribute to these feelings of control in human beings. Do we feel in control so long as we can get what we want? Does decreasing our experience of “wanting” correlate at all to feeling “in control” ? This idea of being able to tolerate wanting so that in the end we can get what we want involves self-regulation, the way that kids who are able to regulate better are better able to wait for delayed rewards—two marshmallows tomorrow instead of one right now. Do we need to actually be in control in order to feel less stressed? Maybe we can experience the same benefits from thinking that we are in control? Are there things that we can do to enhance our sense of being in control?

Heider Simmel Demonstration

2007-04-18T11:16:00.000-05:00

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Narrative/heider-simmel-demo.swf

Pain Pain Pain

2007-04-16T23:48:00.000-05:00

The readings for this week focused on pain as well as social cognition. I found one of the most interesting topics is the relationship between what is occurring on an internal level, as well as a social one. For example, pain has been proved to be hugely subjective, affected largely by cognition. Within “Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain,” researchers discovered that the presence of social support increases an individual’s tolerance of electric shock stimulation. We will expand upon this during our presentation this week, but Carolyn and I read an article on this topic, which found that positive expectations during a painful experience actually decreased the level of pain experienced. It seems that our psychological approach to a situation actually does have an internal effect on our bodies. At several points during the semester, we have discussed the power of the mind on the rest of the body. This concept of pain as subjective seems to be another good example of that.

I was particularly intrigued by the article, “How we predict what other people are going to do” by Chris and Uta Frith. They found that “amygdala activation has been consistently shown as a sign of fear that is elicited unconsciously by viewing a face from another race. When white Americans were shown the faces of unknown black Americans, activity was elicited in the amygdala… The amygdala response to black faces was reduced when the faces were presented for 525 ms rather than 30 ms, and, associated with this reduction, there was increased activity in areas of frontal cortex concerned with control and regulation.” (Page 2) It appears that the patients tried to shift their immediate reaction, thus leading to the reduced amygdala activity. This relationship between their primary reaction and an attempt at mental control was striking for me.

Further, during their discussion of our ability to predict the actions of others, they noted that the process is not selective to a biological target (Page 4). My conference work is about emotional responses to music and I came upon a similar finding. Research has noted that learning music is about making predictions. We can guess the course of a song without ever having heard it, because of a natural understanding of pattern and structure. Additionally, we make predictions based on our prior experience with songs. Thus, when the Friths noted that we are able to make judgments about non-biological targets, I was reminded of my own research. I liked all of the readings for this week, but was continuously struck by the interplay between what is occurring internally and how that is affected by external, social situations.

Pain and Empathy

2007-04-16T00:42:00.000-05:00

The sensation of both fear and physical pain are built into our defenses to warn us of danger, these feelings developed by our progenitor species’ in order to survive. The sensation of emotional and social pain have been developed evolutionarily within our species, not for our survival against the bigger, stronger and better predator in the wild, but for our social survival. This week’s readings focused on pain as well as one’s ability to empathize with another’s pain. The authors write about humans as social creatures, separate from our ancestors with our developed social structure and ability to attribute the mind states of others. Particular attention is paid to the idea of other minds and one’s ability to ‘mind read’ or mentalise another’s feelings.
This week’s readings struck a particular chord with me, due to the nature of my conference work regarding autism. Chris and Uta Frith’s report, “How we predict what other people are going to do” briefly overviewed our ability to infer things about others as well as applying this information to ourselves. We can watch someone encounter a certain stimulus and from their reactions to that stimulus, we can infer that that stimulus may elicit a similar response in ourselves. The particular part of this research overview that I found the most interesting was the topic of shared experiences or shared feelings. In this section they referred to the mirror neuron system, which seems to be responsible for our involuntary tendency to share another person’s experience. In the fairly disjointed reading specifically devoted to mirror neurons, the author seemed to imply that mirror neurons were a good deal of the basis for interactions between creatures with a highly developed social structure. Mirror neurons seem to have some connection to the learning process, specifically how we learn from others. Uta and Chris Frith connect this research to the “theory of mind,” which is a term I’ve found extensively in my research on autism. “The theory of mind,” without going into much depth, refers to our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others, regardless of what we know to be true or what we feel. Inferring the mental states of others is not just that, it helps extensively in our communication with them. In attributing other states we are able to sympathize and therefore empathize with others. This is a social ability, not a defense mechanism. This ability to empathize provides no protection to our physical well being, however it can protect our social status and social well being in our society. Has our social well being evolved to be just as important to us as our physical well being? In becoming a complex society have we added to our burdens in adding the burden of the importance of social interaction? Or has this only replaced the decreased need for protection from wild creatures that are less of a threat to us than they were to our progenitors?
“Why rejection hurts” talks about the growing importance and similarities between social pain and physical pain. The authors found that both social pain and physical pain share the same neural mechanisms for processing that pain. In this article they define physical pain as ‘unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage and emotion pain as when a social relationship is threatened, damaged or lost. We seem to have become incredibly dependent on social interaction from the very beginning. Our attachment to our parents seems to be incredibly important to our physical/brain developmental as well as our social development. The article implies that this type of social attachment is unique to mammals. When I was younger I used to be fascinated with sharks and their ability to live on their own from birth (regardless of whether they are hatched from eggs or not,) what makes sharks not need that social interaction with their parents as to say, dolphins who stay in schools and care for each other their entire lives? Do all mammals do this? What causes the variation in mammals and whether or not they stay in groups? In this article they also refer to a relative over exposure to social pain as infants. We experience social pain when we are apart from our mother. We are also a species of societies in which we rely to varying degrees on others to get about our daily life. Have we developed in a way that has cancelled out the need for other defense mechanisms? How will this effect the evolution of our species?

pain & social neuroscience

2007-04-15T23:36:00.000-05:00

When we contrast the pain felt from the attack of a blunt or sharp object with that of lost love, it may be difficult to draw any comparison other than that they both hurt. However, research indicates that physical and social pain do have commonalities at the neurological level. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been shown to activate with the conscious, aversive experience of both kinds of pain.
Anyone with an intact somatosensory cortex, posterior insula, and nociceptors (among other things) has the biological tools to process the sensory component of physically painful stimuli, but people with lesioned ACCs do not feel it as unpleasant or distressing. Dorsal ACC activity is correlated with self-reports of perceived unpleasantness as a result of painful stimuli, as well as upsetting social situations, as revealed by Eisenberger’s (2003) experiment that showed increasing dACC corresponding with increasing self-reports of distress in subjects who were excluded in a virtual game of catch. Additional evidence of the relatedness between social and physical pain comes from the fact that opiates and strong social support relieve both. There have also been numerous findings that the frequent experience of one type of pain predicts a heightened sensitivity to the other.
As with anything else, an evolutionary explanation for the origin of the ACC’s role as a neural alarm for pain might serve best: in any species, pain is a powerful motivator to escape pain because it threatens survival. Because mammalian infants require long periods of maternal care to survive, the pain of separation from the mother would be an adaptive way to prevent such an occurrence.
A final note on the implications of the anterior cingulate cortex and the perception of pain is that one doesn’t need to be the person receiving the painful stimulus to feel it. The ACC is also activated when a person watches his/her significant other receive an electric shock. This would not be possible without one of evolution’s most ingenious creations—mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons, which are found in different areas of human and primate brains, are activated when a person (or primate) performs an action and also when one observes another performing the same action. Mirror neurons are largely responsible for humans’ ability to accurately predict other people’s mental states and future behavior. They make it easy by producing the same neural representations that would exist if we were the ones experiencing the state, and in that sense we are experiencing it (to an extent.) The above example concerning pain is just one among many of these occurrences. Mirror neurons also explain why smiles, laughter, yawning, crying, etc. are contagious, why seeing a facial expression of disgust activates the same brain regions that smelling something disgusting would, and why seeing someone being touched activates the somatosensory cortex. Without mirror neurons, we could not feel what others are feeling, and the malfunction or lack of mirror neurons in autistic individuals may give evidence to the nature of their deficit in this respect.
The skill endowed upon us by mirror neurons is often referred to as "empathy," but this is a misnomer in my understanding. If a person tells a story of how some experience elicited feelings of sadness and the listener feels sad herself, she is sympathizing or identifying rather than empathizing. The same goes for the sharing of cognitive appraisals (as opposed to emotional response). If empathy is thinking or believing what another thinks or believes, it would be necessary for the empathizer to agree with that thought or belief, thus implying sympathy or identification. But empathy does not require the sharing of thoughts or feelings. It is rather understanding someone in his/her own terms. It’s appreciating another person point of view, regardless of how they differ from our own, which the Friths refer to as "mentalizing." Good empathizers can empathize with an ideology that completely conflicts with their own simply by giving the impression that the other person’s perspective as that person knows it is understood.

Mirror Neurons and Mentalizing

2007-04-15T17:05:00.000-05:00

This week’s set of readings focused on mental states in human beings and our ability to recognize these states in ourselves and in others. Two concepts were discussed in depth throughout the readings; mirror neurons and mentalizing. The two concepts are both related to social abilities found in humans. Mirror neurons are involved in physiological states and emotional expression whereas mentalizing is the process of attributing mental states (desires, intentions, and beliefs) to oneself and others.

Mirror neurons were discovered in the ventral premotor area in monkeys. These neurons fired in response to motor activity performed by the monkey itself and also when the monkey was observing the same motor activity being performed by another monkey. The discovery of mirror neurons brings truth to the saying ‘monkey see, monkey do’. Mirror neurons are also in humans. They allow us to share and understand another person’s experiences. For example, “seeing a painful stimulus being applied to someone’s body activates the same areas (AI and ACC) as having the same pain applied to oneself” (Frith & Frith pg 5). The ability to recognize and imitate another’s behavior is fundamental for social interaction. It reduces the risk of being socially rejected, it protects a person from danger, and it helps in the formation of group identity.

Mentalizing is the ability to recognize and take another person’s point of view. It could be argued that mentalizing builds off of the mirror neuron system. It is a higher form of imitation. Studies measuring brain activity during mentalizing found activation in the anterior paracingulate sulcus (part of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex) as well as the temporo-parietal junction. These areas of the brain were activated during mentalizing other people’s mental states as well as their own mental states. Mentalizing is not an innate process. Some components are linked to neural processes and others are learned and developed during childhood. It is a process that requires nature and nurturing.

Research on autism has led to the observation that mentalizing; being able to attribute mental states to self and others is faulty in individuals with autism. They are unable to recognize the mental states of other people. Is it possible for autistic people to learn the process of mentalizing? Ralph Adolphs in “The Social Brain” conducted an experiment with an amygdala damaged patient. She had trouble recognizing the emotion fear because she did not pay attention to the eyes of the face (the facial feature that expressed fear the most). When the experiments told her to pay attention to the eyes, she was able to identify the emotion accurately. Adolphs is currently conducting a similar experiment with autistic people. He hopes to intervene in a similar way with the autistic individuals as he did with the patient with amygdala damage. If a similar type of intervention is possible, is there a way of teaching people with autism the process of mentalizing? This would be extremely beneficial to their social interactions.

2007-04-15T09:45:00.001-05:00

Pain and Empathy

I was assured after reading the review article “Social Cognitive Neuroscience: where are we headed?” as in the last few weeks I have become disenchanted with the preoccupation of brain imaging in neuroscience. They ask why is the field of neuroimaging important in understanding how the brain and in turn the mind works? By understanding what regions and networks are responsible in mental processes we can begin to understand what happens in the mind and in the brain that is responsible for specific behaviors. For example, there may be elements to the process of fear that would involve regions of the brain that we could not deduce through behavioral observation or could not be described by the participant because it is below the level of consciousness. There may also be areas of brain activation that overlap in mental processes that can explain the complexity behind emotions. In the study of empathy and pain they had couples perform a task where one partner suffered an electric shock and the other partners brain was scanned as they anticipated their partners pain. They found that not only were brain regions activated by the expectation of another’s pain but was overlapped by the activation of areas that signifies the experience of going through pain for ones self. Only through neuroimaging can they better explain then mental processes that occur during an empathetic episode.

I wonder then how one could define empathy with the information from modern brain imaging techniques. Does empathy exist when only one can experience someone else’s pain or pleasure? Are those who are more empathetic hold a greater mental capacity to actually experience someone else’s emotions? The article may be leaning towards a yes as it explains the role that mirror neurons play in social behavior and how there is an area in the brain that allows us to “mind-read”. Evolutionarily empathy makes perfect sense as it is a tool that helps weed out the cheats at the poker table and it becomes advantageous to be in someone’s mind while in the process of bargaining. On page 219 of the review they state, “There is some evidence that untrustworthy people might have more memorable faces than trustworthy faces”. There is a reoccurring theme of the importance of face reading in the study of empathy and I was wondering what Paul Ekman would say in regards to empathy being a skill that one can learn.

The second article I would like to address is “ Why rejection hurts” as it illustrates how neurological systems overlap in an unusual and unexpected way. They explain why rejection hurts by starting with the definition of social pain, which is the “distressing experience arising from the perception of actual or potential psychological distance from close others or a social group.” This simplistic definition gives rise to the importance of companionship for humans and other social animals and they link this to self esteem as it can be an indicator to social acceptance and integration. They focus on the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) and specifically its dorsal subdivision (dACC) to explain how the brain reacts to physical and emotional pain. The dACC experiences neighboring and sometimes overlapping activation during the experience of physical pain and when there is a conflict or a discrepancy between two opposing facts. I wish they illustrated what they meant by “discrepancy detection” better and what type of experiments led to the detection of activation in this area. I am battling with the relationship between discrepancy detection and how that relates to social rejection. But to get to their point, they illustrate the overlap in the two systems by comparing it to an alarm system. The sensor is the discrepancy detector and pain distress is the alarm bell sounding and the overlap of these two areas may be a complementary “neural alarm system”. What is the most striking to me is how people that are in chronic pain are more likely to be preoccupied with relationship status and worried about rejection. Those too who are rejection sensitive report more stress while watching a video depicting physical pain. This reminds me of our focus on empathy and what constitutes an empathetic person in regards to their psychological make up and their brain chemistry. There is sometimes a striking difference in people’s empathetic abilities and I wonder exactly what are the neurological differences in these people against a standard norm (if this is even possible).

On a side note I was wondering how endorphins and dopamine work as I know they complement each other, but I am not sure how. I was reminded in our last class how my dad had to quite smoking and he has been smoking two packs for about thirty years (that was my spring vacation). He actually took it well, mostly because he was on some new, fancy neurotransmitter blocker. But one night he was grinding up fresh horseradish for dinner and I caught him sniffing the stuff like he was at Studio 54. I guess it made him feel better but I was trying to understand why it was helping with his cravings and anxiety brought on from his nicotine addiction.

Positive Psychology or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

2007-04-11T02:13:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings situate two very different theoretical positions against each other. At first glance, it seems that hedonics and pleasure would be related to the idea of positive psychology, but I soon discovered that they could not be further separated.

Positive psychology seeks to ameliorate the human condition. It is outward-looking, philanthropic in nature, and in my opinion is a refreshing breath of fresh air. When I last studied psychology, in the 1970s, much of the body of work that we are reading in this class had yet to be created. A great deal of it has been rather difficult for me to assimilate, coming as I do from a viewpoint that tends more to the humanistic and traditional.

Even so, much of the work we have read in this class is instructive and fascinating. My most salient criticism of some of the newer work I have encountered in this class, however, is that the studies and papers I find most problematic seem, if not exclusively, then disturbingly, self-referential. Some researchers appear to treat the theory at hand as the most important element of the equation, and the humans and animals involved in the research are but puzzles to be taken apart and fitted back together in the image of the researcher’s ideology. Often the clinical trials and studies appear biased and to have been designed to prove the researchers’ ideas, and are written up less than clearly, without adequate details.

Worse, the logic involved often seems convoluted and not really based on . . . well . . . logic.

Take, for example, Gilbert et al. on The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad. Their main premise is based on a so-called paradox in which the authors ponder how odd it is that a person using a faster mode of transportation will arrive at his or her destination, though it is further from their origin, than another person using a slower mode of transport but traveling a shorter distance.

They attempt to associate this “paradox” with the rebound effect they describe whereby some more severe harms or illnesses are healed more quickly by more intense medical attention and treatment than some less severe ailments. From here, they jump to the thought that this effect can be reproduced psychologically, again trying to associate this idea with the more rapid healing of illnesses by more intense treatment. The thing that isn’t lining up for me is that I don’t think you can just use any old paradox (which this isn't, by the way) to illustrate or prove another. It's an entirely different situation, and may be ironic to some degree but none of these are really a paradox, if the mechanisms work as the authors say they do. It is not counter-intuitive or even difficult to believe that certain illnesses, treated aggressively, could respond more quickly than less intense illness or injury left untreated. This model also leaves out the many severe illnesses and injuries that no treatment can heal.

As to the travel "paradox", a commuter may choose different modes of transport for reasons other than travel time. The walk or bike ride may be good exercise, and the individual may be able to spare the half hour or whatever the shorter trip may take by the slower method, but not be able to spare an entire day to travel to a neighboring city by the same slow mode of travel. As for degree of counter-intuitiveness, neither intuition nor counter-intuition are needed to know that it could take much longer for a much shorter trip using a slower mode of travel, and that you may easily be able to get to the next town quicker by car than you could walk to your local market. I just might not have all day to go to the next town, but could spare half an hour to walk to the market, and perhaps even save time as I might not have to go to the gym that day.

The New York to London trip vs. traveling to Boston is similar in content and intuitiveness. Plane rides to London do not offer an opportunity to interact with the scenery along the way as slower modes of travel might. Thus, had one the time, one might choose to drive from New York to Boston in order to enjoy the scenery and stop in one's favorite seaside towns along the way, rather than taking the Metroliner, which is faster and cheaper but not as rewarding in both tangible and intangible ways. Likewise the same individual might choose not to take a cruise to London, although that also offers rewarding interaction with interesting scenery but may take much longer than the time one has available. I see no real paradox here, unless every contrasting choice one could make in life constitutes a paradox.

If you want a paradox, you need to look at either a duck-billed platytpus, or something apparently based on logic but actually not possible, or at quantum mechanics where measuring one particle changes properties in another at some distance but where the first can not possibly communicate with the second in any traditional way. What these people are calling a paradox is actually a kind of situational irony.

Additionally, the authors use an example of a wife rationalizing her husband’s infidelity but not getting over leaving dirty dishes in the sink. This is yet another bad example, and causes me to further question the thinking of these researchers. They completely ignore one obvious facet of their premise; the fact that one relationship causes more pain than another when serious problems arise implies that there is more at stake in that relationship, and more serious transgressions may go unchallenged for a number of reasons. A person might accept his or her partner's having an affair rather than lose that person for any number of reasons. The reason the affair has taken place must have included at least some element of the dynamic of the relationship. The cuckolded partner might actively drive the other away, either consciously or unconsciously, yet be unwilling to let them go entirely. Or the philandering partner may be more dominant and know that their more submissive other will put up with their behavior from fear of being alone (or any of many possible psychic hurts.) Whatever the reason for the affair, it may be less threatening to either or both partners to squabble over the dishes in the sink than to deal with the myriad implications and consequences of an affair, even in the best possible relationship (under the circumstances.)

Furthermore, and more to the point that I am trying to make, these authors have set everything up around a negative, dysfunctional model, seemingly to make the point that people are better off managing their expectations by choosing the very worst of several unappealing options, on the theory that in the end they will feel better about (for example) losing an entire office than a file cabinet. The disease model here seems itself diseased!

On the other hand, Positive Psychology has a purpose outside itself. It seeks, in a lovely and utopian way, to improve the entire world. This might seem unrealistic, but why? Perhaps because of the disease model that has dominated psychology since the end of the second world war, a time when paranoia ruled the world and children were told to hide under their desks in case of a nuclear attack.

Several years ago, I read a book entitled Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves, about how the world was changed forever by the first world war – how an innocence was lost and men on battlefields attacked each other not with swords and “glory” but with cowardice and poison gas. I found it depressing, raised as I was by a father who was born the year the war ended, who was himself raised by parents who grew up before this terrible war that changed the entire world. He was taught, and taught me, that there is something sublime about life and about the world, even when things are really, really rough. When it becomes hard to see any transcendent quality to alleviate the harsher side of things, life becomes more onerous.

Graves’ book seemed to explain a great deal; it all seemed to fit together with the overwhelmingly prevalent disease model in medicine coupled with increasing poor health of most citizens of developed nations, the crumbling social systems of our own country and much of the world, pollution and global warming increasing out of control, an observable decline in all sorts of social standards, and so much more that adds up to an apparent emptiness in so much of modern life.

This is why I am so elated to have read the articles on Positive Psychology. That a group of psychological authorities has created such a body of work emphasizing the best of the human spirit comes as a delightful surprise. That they see the value of prevention in mental illness is stunningly wonderful. These scientists seek not to gloss over reality with platitudes and pretty ideas lacking substance, but to build a new psychology based on what is best in the creatures it studies. These people are not “new age” dreamers, but experienced and seasoned researchers who know the difference between reality and ideological dreams, even when those dreams are nightmares. Their work gives me new hope, which I believe is an essential element in a healthy psyche. It was a pleasure to read these articles, and I will definitely seek out more information on Positive Psychology.

Emotions Below Our Radar

2007-04-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

This weeks readings touched on the differences between conscious and unconscious emotional stimuli/experiences, ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, and the importance of optimism. The topics addressed seemed to have value beyond improving our understanding of human behavior, they seemed to reveal information that could be useful to the development of techniques for improving health and overall quality of life. Although I was not thoroughly sold on all of the papers, they each succeeded to alter my perception and spark new questions.

Berridge challenged my theory of emotions in his article on unconscious emotions. Up until these readings I had been formulating a theory based on a notion that we have a significant amount of control over our emotions, and in denying this control we are shirking off some of our responsibility for our actions. While one may indeed act on behalf of an emotional impulse, the lack of control or awareness is due to conditioned responses, laziness, or pathological conditions (it is not our fault though, we are taught to be this way). Berridge and colleagues experimentally demonstrated an unconscious emotional response (that did not have any negative connotations). Using subliminal images and an open juice bar they were able identify what they considered to be emotional responses based on the subjects behavior (beverage consumption). While these responses were apparent to the trained eye, the subjects were reportedly unaware of their emotional displays. Although I do not quite understand the beverage consumption model, I trust that they had good reason.

Berridge and colleagues raised another issue that challenged my current understandings. They distinguish between ‘wanting’ ( which they also refer to as sensitized incentive salience, “an underlying implicit and subjective process”) and ‘liking’ (“an objective affective reaction”). With this distinction in mind, they attempted to investigate the differences between wanting and liking on a neurological level. They acknowledge that this concept may seem counterintuitive, and suggest that the differences in experience may be discrete and thus fall below our radar. They further suggest that irrational desires, desire for things that are not particularly pleasant, may be provoked by the wanting system and falsely interpreted as liking. The authors describe a case in which a certain factor (B-19) evoked a desire for further stimulation and sexual arousal, but did not evoke an orgasm or statements to the effect of “that feels good”. Thus, the desire for further stimulation was not due to the pleasantness/liking, but rather brain activity that causes irrational ‘wanting’.

Despite their observation of different neurological pathways that evoke distinct responses, I have trouble accepting their distinction between wanting and liking. Is there not some pleasure in the act of wanting? I do not see how you could want something in the absence of a foreseeable reward. In that case does the motivation for the ‘want’ not invoke a sense of pleasure in and of itself? Is sexual arousal not a pleasant feeling (even sans orgasm)? And is desire for further stimulation not indicative of an enjoyable experience, or an experience with some type of desirable reward? I understand how wanting is not always pleasurable, but can wanting occur without some foreseeable reward? We would not do something if we did not hope to get something pleasurable out of it (at least I cannot think of any examples). There must be some level of reward that seems worthwhile even in the unhealthiest of behaviors. Although I clearly remain dissatisfied by their distinction between ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, this work does shed light on possible neurological underpinnings of drug addiction, eating disorders, obsession, and depression, and may be useful in developing methods for treating these disorders.

positive psychology

2007-04-09T15:17:00.000-05:00

Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s introduction to the “Positive Psychology” issue of American Psychologist emphasizes the need to develop the study of a “positive psychology” that would discuss the effects of optimism on overall health, wisdom, talent, and creativity in individuals, yet more importantly, how this could be productive within a social/political future. In the first paragraph of their introduction, they write,
“Entering a new millennium, Americans face a historical choice. Left alone on the pinnacle of economic and political leadership, the United Sates can continue to increase its material wealth while ignoring the human needs of its people and those of the rest of the planet. Such a course is likely to lead to increasing selfishness, to alienation between the more and the less fortunate, and eventually to chaos and despair...Psychology should be able to help document what kinds of families result in children who flourish, what work settings support the greatest satisfaction among workers, what policies result in the strongest civic engagement, and how people’s lives can be most worth living.”
It is fascinating to me that this article was written in January 2000, just before the 2000 presidential election. It seems like this article was almost intended to convey a need for optimism that will be helpful in the future. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s article stresses the importance of working towards a discourse on positive psychology that would benefit our society in the long run, in terms of community, family, education, and so forth. This need stems from the past and current focus on pathology and “damaged” brains instead of putting attention towards the need to develop the positive aspects of our psychological cognitive and unconscious abilities.
On reading this paper, one personal event came to mind. Last weekend I went to Providence for Passover where my aunt lives. One day we took the whole family (all 25 of us) to see these mosaic installations that my aunt did as community projects in my cousin Sophie’s old elementary school (she has done one every year for the past ten years). She works with classes (usually 5th graders) to create mosaic murals based on a general theme and the children’s’ own drawings. For example, one mural showed all the kids favorite places in Providence. Another was about family heirlooms (each student designed their own plaque based on a family heirloom which was incorporated around the mosaic). As I walked through the school (which was otherwise sterile and depressing, aside from the mosaics) my cousin informed me that in the time since she left the school no longer had funding for math, science and music. After hearing this sad news, I thought about how effective the mosaics were for my own positive psychology, walking through this otherwise dismal environment, and how, for these kids, these collaborative, creative projects must be so beneficial for their own positive psychology, to be able to walk through the halls and see something bright, colorful and imaginative that they contributed to. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s article, therefore, seemed almost like a plea for this sort of influence in communities, schools, families, etc., in that a study of the aspects of positive psychology, in the long run, may benefit our society on a much broader spectrum than we realize.
One study by Kent Berridge et al. focusing on positive psychology investigated “unconscious emotions” in a positive framework. They believed that the cognitive “unconscious” is similar to implicit memory/perception (Kihlstrom) as related to unconscious affective reactions. In the study they showed a series of faces (with the participants given the task of identifying the gender as a means of distraction) with positive, negative, or neutral facial expressions. They tested the subliminal effect by providing the participants with a fruity drink and seeing how much they consumed or wanted to consume. In this test they aimed to determine how unconscious core affective processes are developed, and if they exist at all. What they discovered is that unconscious core effective processes are similar in many ways to conscious core affective processes in that they require a stimulus for elicitation, a reaction direction (positive, negative, or neutral), and they must persist and be expressed later. Unlike conscious core affective processes, however, they are not subjective in reports. They also are caused by an unconscious event. All of these factors are related and applied to what Berridge et al. call a “value-laden event”. This also relates to the distinction made between wanting versus “liking”, and pleasure versus enjoyment. An unconscious emotion can be elicited by applying this “liking” factor to an event, and therefore subliminally attaching the notion that something good is about to happen. In the same sense as “free floating anxiety” (in stressful cases, seen in Ledoux’s studies) a free floating “goodness” also exists, what Berridge calls “the pleasure gloss”.
In general I found this study to be one of the most entertaining we’ve looked at so far, and very insightful. I’m not sure if I understand exactly how the consumption method was effective in measuring the unconscious emotion, especially when thirst is taken into account, but I did find it interesting how something subtle can subconsciously affect your mood. In context to the Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi article, I think this development of the emotional unconscious can be useful in treating cases like depression. It’s exciting to think that sans medication we can be capable of controlling our optimism at all times.

Reading Response

2007-04-09T13:59:00.000-05:00

Hedonics/Reward

This week’s reading focuses on the mental processes of happiness, core affect of “liking” or “wanting”. Both of these were linked with the question of unconscious or conscious emotion. My main concern was with idea of an unconscious emotion, which I thought was hard to define and the experience of happiness.

The question of unconscious emotion was very striking to me. First of all it appears as though all emotions at one point can become conscious. Indeed because of the importance of feedback in the experience of emotion, it seems impossible for an emotion to be entirely unconscious; it always comes to consciousness some way or another. The only way it could stay unconscious is with subliminal images, which the article uses. In that case, I can understand how the emotion is unconscious and has a result (which is conscious) on one’s emotional experience. How can this translate in life experience? Can we talk about unconscious emotion without using subliminal images? What are some examples of unconscious emotion in everyday experience? How could it be studied? Can

The two positive psychology articles claimed that the positive aspect of our lives and psychology are often neglected or at least are not considered as important as the negative. In other words, we tend to pay more attention to what is not going right than to what is going well. Why do we have trouble seeing the good in things? What would our lives be without happiness? In general it seems as thought people more easily fall into seeing only the negative aspects of things. Why is that? How is it helpful? The author introduces an evolutionary explanation. It is good for us because we can protect ourselves, once again, it is associated with survival but isn’t happiness also good and essential for our survival? In general human beings tend to observe the negative aspects more frequently and easily. What does this question say about our society? Are we scared of what might be positive? Is it because it is easier to complain and find excuses than actually try and be happy? Another concern is that we obviously know what it is like to be too unhappy but can we talk about someone being too happy? And what are the consequences of such a phenomenon? The fact that usually being happy and realistic is opposed also says something about the way we view our lives and society. My next question concerns therapy, and positive psychology. A lot of my friends I have talked to about therapy usually see it as a waist of time and money. The article from positive psychology progress “Empirical Validation of Interventions” seems to think that therapy and psychology should not only be concerned with pathology but also with the positive aspects of our lives and mental health. “… our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue” (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, p7).Can therapy be helpful for everyone? Could it prevent unhappiness or depression rather than just curing it?

In the next article “The Peculiar longevity of Things Not So Bad”, the authors talk about an interesting paradox. This paradox concerns the fact the affect of something not so bad will last longer than something very bad. The affect of something very bad will be stronger but we are able to deal with it in a better way and therefore it won’t stay as long as a strongly negative emotion. Something “not so bad” has a softer direct affect but it lasts longer, we can’t get ride of it as easily. The experiences presented in the article were done with people not knowing each other. I wondered if or how the results would change if something bad happened to someone we knew (and liked) or if someone we knew (and liked) did something to us? Will the fact that we car more influence the strength of the affect and the way one might deal with his or her feelings?

2007-04-08T21:34:00.000-05:00

Positive Psychology and Hedonics
Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt

Hedonics, the please system, and positive psychology was the focus of his week’s reading. From careful distinctions between ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, to the more general studies of positive psychology, subjectivity and the processes of the unconscious mind were explored in great depth. Through investigating hedonics and the pleasure system in humans, primates, and rats, research has proven that ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ are different; simple pleasures are indeed not that simply understood. By examining the differences both physically (in the brain) and behaviorally (in actions) ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ are used to more carefully unravel key questions about the subjective unconscious, unconscious emotions (what they really are) and their influence on behavior.
In the article ‘Praising Rewards’, Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson investigate the difference between wanting and liking. The terms are often seen as two side of the same psychological coin. They are viewed as interchangeable and connected words: if you like something than you should want it; if you want it you should like it, however, this isn’t always the case; each term can be analyses on its own. Berridge and Robinson pull apart the process of wanting verses liking by analyzing the components involved in the reward system. The neurobiology of reward is insightful when confronting pathological issues such as addictive behaviors, drug abuse, obsession, and depression. Their article highlights that wanting and liking involve different components of the reward system. The components of wanting are described as incentive salience (a term coined by Berridge and Robinson) motivation, and goal directed plans, verses liking: explicit hedonic feelings— core hedonic impacts—and their implicit affects.
The difference between the two is more clearly contrasted when looking at dopamine’s effect on the pleasure system. Liking is an objective affective reaction. An example of this provided by Berridge and Robinson is that of the liking of taste; “liking for taste involves activity in a distributed neural network that also has been implicated in drug reward. Microinjections of opiod agonists into the accumben shell causes increased facial ‘liking’ reactions to sweetness [the protrusion of the tongue]” (Berridge and Robinson, 2003). A bitter taste provokes it’s own physical reaction, a gaping, opened mouth. The neurotransmitter dopamine, (when either activated or suppressed) does not affect the expression of liking, however it can enhance the sensation of wanting. In humans, “activation of accumbens-striatal dopaminergic systems by amphetamine” correlates with greater subjective wanting. Dopamine manipulation can elicit an increase in wanting of a particular food or drug reward without affecting the subjective ratings of pleasure or liking. As Berridge states in his second article, ‘Simple Pleasures’, “Dopamine systems seem unable to cause a pleasure gloss. Liking reactions to sweetness persist unchanged and normal, no matter what brain dopamine systems are doing” (Berridge, 2004).
To make a more clear distinction between wanting and liking, Berridge describes a case study where the incentive salience wanting is stimulated without hedonic ‘liking’. This is a case described under ‘False Pleasure Electrodes’, where a female patient was implanted with an electrode that stimulates the pleasure system. This patient claimed that the electrode stimulated a strong desire for liquids; it stimulated erotic feelings (sexual stimulation without an orgasm), and the desire to stimulate the electrode again, and again. When stimulated, she drank “copiously”, recorded hot and cold sensations and levels of high anxiety. She began to stimulate the electrode throughout the day at home often neglecting her own hygiene and social engagements (Berridge, 2004). This case illustrates a desire to self-stimulate even though no desirable or pleasurable sensations were occurring. Berridge showed that this patient experienced the incentive salience of ‘wanting’ (to self-stimulate) without hedonic ‘liking’ of the feeling produced by the stimulus itself. In this case, stimulation became an addiction in and of itself.
From this fascinating distinction, Berridge and his collogue Piotr Winkielman examine the possible effects of unconscious ‘liking’ in our emotional states and in our behavior. In their article, ‘What is an unconscious emotion?’ they argue that subconscious ‘liking’ can influence emotional states and behavioral decisions. Their article describes an experiment in which subliminal images unconsciously changed either the participant’s preferences for an image or their consumption of fruit juice offered throughout the experiment. In this study individuals were shown images of Chinese ideographs followed by subliminal exposures of a happy, neutral, or angry facial expression. There was also a second layer to this experiment, participants were able to pour themselves and consume glasses of sweet juice throughout the experiment. Their finding showed that subliminal facial stimuli significantly affected the participants. Negative subliminal images resulted in less beverage consumption, and/or affected the participant’s conscious emotional states. Berridge and Winkielman demonstrated that both positive affect as well as negative affect could unconsciously influence the behavior and/or emotional state of individual participants.
This study gives a new meaning to the notion of unconscious emotional experiences, arguing that “In normal adults under some conditions, core ‘liking’ reactions may influence a person’s consumption behavior later, without a person being able to report subjective awareness of the affective reaction at the moment it was caused. When the brain generates an affective response of which the mind is unaware, as we have described here, there exists a truly unconscious emotion” (Berridge and Winkielman, 2003). The subtle distinctions made in these articles (liking verses wanting, and the influence of unconscious stimuli on emotion) reiterate the role that feelings play in our behavioral preferences and decisions. Simple feelings are actually very complex, and our conscious decisions can be influenced by truly unconscious preferences. The subjective assessment of our emotional states is a conscious process that can be affected by unconsciously perceived stimuli.
The next issue that this week’s reading focused on was that of subjective experience and subjective emotional processing. Positive psychology is a field that focuses on channeling individual strength and enhancing the feeling of worth and happiness. The scope of the two articles focusing on positive emotions, ‘Positive Psychology: An Introduction’ and Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interviews’ were large: suggesting that individual changes and increased happiness on an individual level could change the collective state of our future as a nation. However large the scope, they might be right. Positive psychology looks to the average, ‘normal’ person with the intention of bettering one’s emotional well-being. One of the most fascinating aspects of these articles was their definition of subjective. Martin Seligman, Nansook Park, and Christopher Peterson argue that the individual defines a subjective emotion. Happiness, for example, is what one defines it as. A central issue in this work is how a person’s “values and goals mediate between external events and the quality of experience.” Positive psychologists look to enhance one’s ability to cope, to find joy, and ultimately to mediate and define their own happiness.
These articles argue that an individual can consciously shape their sense of well-being, and with time, enhance their own sense of fulfillment. Because subjectivity exists on an individual level, I found these article practically interesting. They focus not on what’s gone wrong, but what can be strengthened in everyone.
Another interesting point in Seligman, Park, and Peterson’s work, was that of optimism. They suggest that an optimistic attitude towards daily activities and even in severe illnesses such as AIDS, can lead to better health, and even slow the symptoms of disease. Though the articles were a bit on the idealistic side, they prove a significant point: individuals can, to some extent, cognitively transform their subjective states, and can consciously work to enhance well-being.
Our emotional states are complex, they can be influenced by unconsciously perceived stimuli, and they can are subjectively represented. This week’s reading emphasized that the feeling brain has many layers, including processes that we are not aware of and processes that are conscious and cognitively processed. Emotions are three dimensional, and all of these factors influence even the most basic of feelings.

The [In]Existence? of Unconscious Emotions

2007-04-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings discussed the definition, neural processes and various brain structures involved with hedonics/reward. Additionally, the papers attempted to differentiate between conscious and unconscious emotions.

In any scientific field, but especially psychology, members often become so transfixed by popular schools of thought or the latest controversial ideas that they can forget the actual purpose of the discipline: to help people. This made Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s description of “positive psychology," the study of positive emotions, characters and institutions, especially refreshing. It forced me to focus not only on how the concepts discussed in class affect people, but how to utilize recently acquired findings to improve people’s psychical and psychological health and overall quality of life. The articles also noted people’s tendency, which is all too apparent in the popular subjects of current psychological research, to focus almost exclusively on negative ideas. The authors predictably assumed the evolutionary perspective noting that our tendency to focus more on potential problems stems from our innate need for self-preservation, which is much more likely to be affected by something negative, like a hungry predator or violent competitor for resources.

In “The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad,” the authors noted how the effect of mildly negative stimuli is actually worse than that of severely negative ones. We know that our brains are specially programmed to process tragedies, but this article explained that milder tragedies or “things not so bad” are not processed the same way, which explains why the effects of supposedly milder negative stimuli can potentially last so much longer.

But the most interesting and contentious articles this week concerned the potential existence of unconscious emotions. I admit that after weeks of attempting to accept that emotions are, for the most part, predictable responses and therefore largely controllable, I initially found Berridge’s various articles refreshing. However, I was ultimately unconvinced of the existence of unconscious emotions.

In “What is an unconscious emotions?: (The case for unconscious ‘liking’),” Berridge and Winkielman attempt to modify William Jame’s classic definition of emotion as “the conscious experience or subjective feeling of emotion” to include those experienced on an unconscious level. (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 181–182) I agree that both positive and negative emotions can be elicited by subliminal (i.e. unconsciously recognized) stimuli, for example, the negligible exposure to various facial expressions. I also agree that this unconscious recognition can dramatically influence an individual’s behavior, decisions and opinions, as proven by the subjects’ consequentially influenced appraisal and consumption of the beverage. However, I feel that both the unconscious recognition of emotionally charged stimuli and the resulting influence on behavior are the result of previously proven existent unconscious cognitive processes, like implicit memory and implicit perception, rather than an unconscious emotional experience. (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 184) I agree with Clore who argues that, “ . . . it is not possible to have an unconscious emotion because emotion involves an experience, and one cannot have an experience that is not experienced . . . emotions cannot be unconscious because they must be felt, and feelings are by definition conscious. (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 183)

I felt that Berridge et al largely missed the point in their attempt to define and prove, or at least provide evidence for, the existence of unconscious emotion. Firstly, their definition for unconscious or “’implicit emotion refers to the changes in experience, thought or action that are attributed to one’s emotional state, independent of his or her conscious awareness of that state” is significantly flawed. (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 184) Unconscious emotion refers only to a change in experience. Any resulting “changes in thought or action” are merely effects of this presumed emotional state, but not the state itself. A smile is not happiness itself, only the result of it. They elaborate further by citing “inaccurate labeling of the exact nature of one’s emotion, as when one angrily denies that one is angry” in addition to “errors of attention, as when one realizes only later that one has been gripped by an emotional experience at an earlier time.” (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 184) However, the authors are forced to admit that individuals in such cases are still “fully conscious of the events that cause the emotion, and one may be conscious of the many effects of emotion. Moreover, the actual emotional state is presumed capable of being made conscious if only the person’s full attention is directed to the emotional experience, and the right label is provided. (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 184) They admit that the unconscious emotional experience or “truly implicit affect would require the demonstration of an affective reaction of which one was simply not aware, even upon introspection.” (Berridge & Winkielman 2003, 184) As such, the existence of implicit emotions is ultimately impossible to prove, regardless of what may be construed as supporting evidence from observed behavioral responses. To conclude, the initial stimulus or reason behind an emotional experience can be unconscious, however, the actual emotional experience, not to be confused with any resulting changes in thought or behavior, is a subjective feeling or experiences and therefore intrinsically conscious.

Decision-Making and Neuroeconomics

2007-04-03T13:15:00.001-05:00

This week’s readings all involve decision-making. In his last chapter, Damasio discusses Descartes’ error and the meaning of the book's title. He states that beings were beings long before humanity emerged; therefore an organism must first exist and “be” before it can think. As Damasio says, “We are, and then we think, and we think only inasmuch as we are, since thinking is indeed caused by structures and operations of being,” (248). Furthermore, the body and the mind, emotion and reason, are not necessarily separate entities and are integrated processes. Thus, in decision-making, the body and the mind, from emotion to reason, to neural/cell biology, are all interconnected.
Damasio discusses the differences in decision-making in frontal-lobe damage individuals, brain damage patients with lesions other than the frontal lobe, and “normals”.‘Normals’ and patients with brain damage that did not affect the frontal lobe, demonstrated high skin conductance responses to the high-arousal slides, whereas frontal lobe patients showed no skin conductance responses. When asked to debrief, frontal lobe patients had the ability to articulate the high-emotional content of the picture and when the picture was shown. In other words, they knew that the “in spite of realizing their content ought to be disturbing, he himself was not disturbed…the patients could evoke factual knowledge internally but could not produce a somatic state” (211). They knew how they were supposed to feel, but could not feel the appropriate reaction.
The next way that they tested the somatic-marker hypothesis were through gambling experiments, in which they tested frontal lobe patients and ‘normals’ in decision-making drills with real-life uncertainty and circumstances. The objective of the experiment was to lose as little as possible and gain as much as possible. Inherit human biases we have are preference of reward over punishment, gain over loss, and low-risk over high-risk. All ‘normal’ patients were generally picked from decks C and D after ‘learning’ that A and B were risky. Despite smaller gains, these players assumed that Decks C and D would reap higher benefits in the long run. In the cases of Elliot, even though they considered themselves ‘low-risk’, they were bankrupt midway through the game, thus demonstrating the biases and inaccuracy of verbal accounts. Although there was concrete evidence that decks A and B were ‘dangerous,’ and ‘disadvantageous,’ frontal-lobe damage patients continuously became bankrupt because they were insensitive to the long-term affects and acted out of immediate gratification. While ‘normals’ sought out patterns to predict a bad outcome, the neural underpinnings that determined what was wise to avoid/prefer were malfunctioning in frontal lobe patients. ‘Normals’ “place a disappropriate weight on losses relative to gains of similar absolute value,” (Neuroeconomics, 112).
A field called Neuroeconomics has emerged in recent years, combining psychological, neurological and economic studies to more accurately and predictably determine how people make and value choices and decisions. In attempting to understand human (consumer) behavior, economists and neuroscientists alike have assessed that “behavior can be interpreted as choosing alternatives with the goal of maximizing utility,” (Neuroeconomics, 108).
Numerous hormones, neurotransmitters and brain areas are involved in decision-making.The ACC not only responds to positive rewards, but to negative rewards and utility as well, taking into account errors, negative response, pain and penalty. In making decisions, neural systems involved are sensitive to relative gains and loses. Frontal lobe patients, however, are not sensitive to these relative gains and loses.
In Demasio’s experiments, frontal lobe patients were unable to make advantageous decisions for the future because of a lack of working memory and attention and a neural inability to determine a pattern of losses vs. gains. Out of myopia for the future, these patients acted for the ‘now’ rather than the future. Frontal lobe patients did not have the basic skill of planning for future prospects rather than immediate gains. This may be a result of poor working memory or attention, or somatic-markers, whereby future scenarios are not taken into consideration. With failure of the somatic-marker, it is impossible to develop ‘theory-of-mind’ or other such processes important in guiding for the future. How they acted in this game was in direct proportion to how they acted in real life, and their inability to plan ahead.
Dopamine also plays a large role in reward. It “plays a crucial role in value assessment by signaling errors in reward prediction, which are used to augment reward-producing behaviors both by generating learning signals and by adaptively updating goal states and attentional focus in working memory,” (Neuroeconomics, 110).
In the Ultimatum Game, individuals were asked to either accept or reject a sum of money from another player. In typical economic models, individuals would have taken money every time in the Ultimatum Game, since humans prefer inherently rewards. However, half of the unfair offers were rejected. In unfair offers, the dlPFC and the anterior insula lit up when participants were faced with an unfair offer. These areas are associated with deliberative and emotional processes, “if the insular activation was greater than the dlPFC activation, participants tended to reject the offer, if the dlPFC activation was greater, they tended to accept the offer.” Unfair choices elicited disgust and pain. Participants tended to act with trust and under the ‘norm’. These actions were chosen because they elicit social rewards when acted out in the real world. The dlPFC is also involved in “perceptual evidence for decision-making,” (Rorie & Newsome, 42). Sensory evidence is more active when the pictures were clearer and the task easier. Likewise, attention is more required in the more difficult tasks. Like Damasio points out, visual representations and attention are crucial in decision making.
As Grimes and all of the readings commonly state, our brains, evolutionarily, have been made to suit co-habitation with others. He says, while we may have “Machiavellian interests,” we benefit by our biological urges to be cooperative and trustful. Social interactions, love, sex, and many other things trigger the production of oxytocin, a necessary hormone that acts through the parasympathetic nervous system. This hormone goes through parts of the brain associated with memory, the limbic system, prefrontal cortex, memory and decision-making sections. Oxytocin, amongst many other things, has a large role in trustworthiness. Trusting is socially advantageous. Thus, the economic viewpoint that assumes we are only interested in maximizing personal gains is not advantageous. Zak suggests that social cooperation is a ‘primitive’ impulse, whereas greed is only evident in more newly-evolved brain parts. Cooperation involves sophisticated processes such as ‘theory of mind,’ ‘delayed gratification’ ‘attention,’ that frontal lobe patients often lack. Trust, however, does not just entail controlled responses, but involves emotional response. In any case, those who opted to trust usually came out better in the long run.
As Lehrer assesses, “In the real world, losing out in the short term could mean getting a social benefit in the long term,” (502). Although there are specific brain areas involved in mechanism for decision-making, all the readings suggest that there is no one single brain area that determines decision-making. Instead, there are multiple neural processes involved in decision-making. Reward-based decisions are complex, usually come in different modalities, and are time-dependant. When thinking about a future reward, McClure states, brain areas associated with rationality are activated, whereas when it is an immediate reward, emotional circuits become activated. Activity in the brain was directly reflective of what the participants chose.
Damasio and Sanfey and co. say, controlled and automatic processes are not two distinct processes, but rather are a continuum. Although automatic processes jump in to make decision at first, controlled processes then mitigate it when the consequences of using solely the automatic processes becomes too large. Though these systems cooperate, they, at times, compete and do have distinguishable brain lateralization. Just as Damasio states, Sanfey says, automatic/emotional processes are usually hard-wired and involve evolutionarily ‘older’ parts of the brain (posterior cortical structures & subcortical systems, limbic system), whereas controlled processes involve ‘newer’ parts of the brain (anterior and dorsolateral regions of prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex), and are flexible and do not rely on specific mechanisms. Those with frontal lobe damage often lack the basic planning skills because areas involved with higher thinking, problem-solving and planning are localized in the ‘controlled’ processes systems, thereby allowing the ‘automatic’ system take over each time.
Economists have now attempted to integrate the dual-process model. However, Camerer (from Lehrer’s article) says that it remains controversial: too dichotomizing for neuroscientists and too complicated for economists. Neuroeconomics however attempts to bridge the gap. More often than not, Lehrer says, new do not make decisions advantageous to our future, which is why “US consumers currently have a savings rate close to zero…” arguing that, “understanding how we make such decisions will help us develop better economic policies,” (504).
The fact is, economics and marketing do not have our savings rates in mind. In fact, their goal is to bankrupt us and to make us dependant on loans and buy more products. It is advantageous to marketers for consumers to put the future on the backburner and to bank on the present. In an ideal society for the marketer, we would all be Elliots, without the ability to plan for the future. If we always thought about our retirement or savings, brand names would go bankrupt. Labels are ingrained in our minds and influence our every day decisions, as is evident in the Pepsi-taste test, where brand always trumped taste. When drinking a cola with a Coke label, the hippocampus and the midbrain were lit up, just like when we see other brands.
The field of neuromarketing, more so than looking out for our best interest, will use psychological/neurological studies in order to better understand how to manipulate our decisions and enable us to buy their products more predictably. Advertisers are now banking on fMRI scans (rather than outdated methods of verbal accounts) to determine consumer choice and behavior, as in FKF with the Super bowl ads. For an advertisement to be successful, reward sections of the brain must be activated. The merging of these fields is very exciting, but highly manipulative.

neuroeconomics and decision-making

2007-04-02T11:51:00.000-05:00

The readings for this past week highlighted the theory of neuroeconomics and how it relates to emotions and reasoning. Jonah Lehrer discusses how neuroeconomics uses the experimental techniques of neuroscience to make economic decisions. Lehrer says that neuroscientists are looking to understand the immediate causes of economic choices by looking at how the brain makes the economic decisions. This leads to the reasoning aspect of decision-making and how emotions play a role. Humanity is constantly throwing a crimp in neuroeconomic reasoning because of our ability to trust and to approach the future in such irrational ways. Ken Grimes goes into detail about how the Nash equilibrium theory is bunk when adding the neurological act of trust into the theory. The Nash equilibrium discusses how when two strangers are making economic transactions between one another they will not trust each other at all. On the contrary, people consciously choose to be cooperative and trusting when negotiating economically.
Grimes claims that this has something to do with the “trust chemical” in the brain: oxytocin. Whereas some chemicals released into the brain enact “fight or flight” or “rest and digest” reactions, oxytocin is known to release “lust and trust” feelings into the brain. Grimes wants to find a way to build a national utopia through universal acts of releasing oxytocin. That way we can all trust each other and coexist with more harmony. Is this a rational idea within itself or is this humanities irrationality of the future at play? Damasio discusses how there is passion for a reason and having these extreme emotional opinions is part of our reasoning. Is this what Grimes is doing when saying that he wants a utopia of trust?
Damasio explains the title to his book, Descartes’ Error and talks about Descartes separation of the mind and body is what makes his claim, “I think therefore I am.” incorrect. Descartes’ idea of consciousness and reasoning ignores the abstract approach that the mind has. He does not wish to discuss the lucid concepts that emotions and feeling present so he separates the body and the mind so that he can prove his theory to be true. Is Damasio going so far as to say that the phrase should be, “I feel therefore I am.”? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s possible. I think that Damasio wants a synthesis of thinking and feeling to occur so that we can claim existence. We exist because we think and we feel. We are overcome with passion for a reason and that is part of our complexity and fascination, to Damasio.
So, how does neuroeconomics help us to understand the emotional aspect of economic negotiations? It is hard for me to come to a well-developed conclusion because it was hard for me to relate the gambling experiments to real-life situations outside the gambling context. When you add a component to a situation like money, there will be rewards and penalties. So, if there is frontal lobe damage, can one not understand the difference between when they are rewarded and when they are penalized? Does this happen when there is no neuroeconomic aspect to the experiment? Why was economics the choice of study for neuroscientists? How has it been more helpful than other areas? How could Damasio better incorporate neuroeconomics into his studies other than through the gambling experiments?

Neuroeconomics and Decision-Making

2007-04-01T22:34:00.000-05:00

Jake Szczypek
Reading Response #3
4/1/07
Neuroeconomics and Decision-Making

This week’s readings focused on the field of neuroeconomics and how it uses both psychological and economical methodologies in order to learn more about the human brain in relation to decision-making. After having read about the somatic marker hypothesis in Damasio (1994), the additional articles were quite fascinating to me, as I have no experience in economics. What I found most interesting, however, was the discussion over emotional and cognitive processes and how they each play a major role in decision-making.
According to Bechara, et al.’s The Iowa Gambling Task and The Somatic Marker Hypothesis (2005), the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) uses skin conductance responses (SCRs) to test for “emotion-related marker signals” released through the sweat glands (pp.160). Damasio (1994) also uses SCRs in his experiments with Elliot, and both of these readings come to a similar conclusion regarding emotions and their effects on decision-making. In the IGT, individuals with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC) were unable to generate SCRs prior to having conscious knowledge of the IGT. Accordingly, they continued to choose the “bad deck” once they obtained conscious knowledge of the task at hand because of, what appears to be, a lack of emotion processes from the VMPC. Normal participants, however, generated SCRs before having conscious knowledge of the situation and thus demonstrated a preference for the “good decks” early on. Having a functional VMPC, which generated emotional responses to both decks, allows for more advantageous decision-making. These results indicate that cognitive assessment is not the only factor playing a role in our choices. It would appear that emotions play a role in informing our decision-making process in ways that don’t seem to agree with cognitive rationale. Lehrer’s Driven to Market (2006) goes even further to state that there are two processes involved in decision-making: one being a cognitive process and one being an emotion process. However, while economists seem to view this as a productive description of the decision-making process, psychologists tend to disagree. The influence of emotions on rationality is a much more integrated process that can’t be split into a simple “dual-process model” (Lehrer, 2006, pp.503).
As much as I want to agree with the dual-process model, I also believe that it’s much more complicated than two separate systems “fighting” for control. The dual-process model seems like a great way of looking at decision-making, but according to Grimes’ To Trust is Human (2003), the hormone oxytocin has been shown to release “as a response to the social signal of trust” (pp.2). And since oxytocin receptors are located in the hypothalamus and the limbic system (both connecting to areas in the brain involved in memory) the decision to trust another person cannot simply be an “argument” between cognition and emotion. Multiple areas of the brain are activated, weighing memories, rationality, and emotions. It can’t be this dichotomous dual-process some are suggesting, can it? And why do emotions always have to be considered irrational, as if cognition is the antithesis of emotion? Clearly that’s not always the case.
There seems to be evidence in this literature that supports the dual-process, but there also seems to be great uncertainty over whether or not it’s true. For example, Sanfey, et al.’s Neuroeconomics: Cross Currents in Research on Decision-Making (2006) shows convincing neural evidence that there is a dual-process for decision-making (although they describe it as controlled and automatic processes). According to their study with the Ultimatum Game, there are two major brain regions that appear to be active when a participant receives an unfair offer. Participants that rejected the offer showed higher activity in the anterior insula than in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Participants that accepted the offer, however, demonstrated higher activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex than in the anterior insula. It would seem that the area of the brain associated with deliberative processing (being the dlPFC) is more active when participants are “rational” in their decision-making, while the area of the brain associated with emotional processing (being the anterior insula) is more active when participants are “emotional.” So, what does this mean?
Emotional processing is what makes humanity so interesting to me. We’re not rational robots, we’re driven by more than rational thought and that’s also what seems to make us social beings, according Lehrer (2006) and Grimes (2003).

Decision Making

2007-04-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

This weeks readings focused on the processes of reason and emotion in decision-making. In both The Iowa Gambling task and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis and in chapter ten of Descartes’ Error, Damasio discusses two key experiments used to identify biological reactions in relation to emotion and decision-making. The somatic marker hypothesis tests the use of the autonomic nervous system, which consists of an outgoing network of motor commands and an incoming network that signals changes in the viscera. A somatic marker identifies essential changes of body state that are triggered by neural and chemical indicators in the viscera and musculoskeletal systems. When feeling particular emotions the autonomic nervous system generates a secretion of fluid in the skin’s sweat glands. By conducting skin conductive response experiments on people like Elliot with damage to their frontal lobe brain area juxtaposed with normal people, interesting results arose. While the normal participants had skin responses after viewing emotion-provoking slides, the subjects with frontal lobe damage showed no signs of skin reaction. The brain damaged participants could describe in words the horror (or whatever emotion) of the slides but were unable to actually feel what they were talking about even if they were aware of their lack of emotion, which demonstrates Damasio’s first point: to know is not to feel. The lack of something in these patients’ frontal lobe area somehow turned these people into robots.
The second experiment that is discussed is the gambling experiment. This test played with the ideas of reward and punishment in a fun gambling game that possibly activated more ‘real-life’ decision-making, since it wasn’t a typical testing environment. This experiment showed that people with brain damage to their frontal lobe made bad decisions because they were too concerned with the present instead of the future. In a third experiment that combined the skin response tests with the gambling experiments both brain damaged and normal participants showed immediate signs of skin responses. The difference was that the normal subjects continued to show signs of skin response that reflected their increasing learned knowledge to be able to predict bad or good card outcomes to make good decisions, while the brain damaged subjects did not learn from their mistakes even though they were aware of what was going on in the game.
On a slightly different note, I think something that Sanfey, Loewenstein, McClure, and Cohen state in their article Neuroeconomics: cross-currents in research on decision-making is very important to remember: “One current challenge is to ensure that researchers are communicating productively; often, terms such as ‘choice,’ ‘judgement,’ and ‘decision’ are used in different ways by different fields” (114). This also applies to the words ‘reason’ and ‘emotion.’ I felt almost offended by Jonah Lehrer’s use of these words in his article Driven to Market, although I realize a lot of people use it in the same way (it seemed like he was blaming emotions instead of money). I think it is important consider different definitions of both words: why is emotion always considered irrational? Is that true? Is it not rational to follow your instincts? Why does society try to repress emotions (it almost seems like socirty wants to damage our frontal lobes so we can't feel emotion...but of course that would only result in chaos...)? How is reason related to the ability to consider the future? How is it related to the ability to consider the present? Maybe there is more than one kind of reason, like Damasio presents in the first three chapters of Descartes’ Error. Damasio also suggests a very important idea—maybe reason and emotions are not completely separate. We need to find a balance between immediate emotion (reason 1) and future planning (reason 2). I think it is important to remember Damasio’s understanding that ‘feelings are a powerful influence on reason, that the brain systems required by the former are enmeshed in those needed by the latter, and the such specific systems are interwoven with those which regulate the body’ (245).

Emotions and Cognition

2007-03-26T01:21:00.000-05:00

This weeks’ reading focused mostly on the internal processes and systems leading to emotional experience and expression. It took us into the internal experience of what is an emotion. There seems to be general questions such as, where do our emotions come from, and where do our responses come from? What controls them? Various aspects were put forward in all the readings, such as the importance of our working memory, the central role of the amygdala, the limit between feelings and consciousness and the difference between automatic responses and responses learned by experience.
The difference between primary and secondary emotion I think is crucial in order to understand the different reactions and their origins. In this difference lies the distinction between innate, survival reactions and the more complex reactions of secondary emotions. In the case of primary emotions, our responses depend on survival, instinctual regulation. We will therefore act in order to assure survival, the best way we can. Secondary emotions are more complex. They depend on more aspects and processes, such as the process of decision-making, its relation to memory and passed experience and even take place in a different part of the brain. What happens without consciousness such as innate emotions happens in the old brain structures whereas when the situation is more complex, it occurs in systems in the neocortex, a modern sector of the brain.
The importance of our working memory I thought was very interesting and so was the importance of our memory in the process of responding to a situation. Working memory would be the “origin” of cousciousness. Both Damasio and LeDoux described as “concrete” the question of consciousness and emotion, which I thought was very striking.
To what extend are our emotion conscious? And the question of controlling our emotions still remains.
About controlling our emotions, Damasio talked about the chemical substances part of the emotional experience in our brains. He also mentioned medicines that we can use to control our emotions. I was wondering about the influence of medicine on our emotion in the long run. How does it influence our brain and how can we get out of it?
The body mind connection seems to be very important. Which one governs the other tends to be the main question, and what comes first? We can’t deny the role of both mind and bodily expression in emotional experience, they are strongly connected. The keyword seems to be “interaction”. The answer to most of our question about what comes first and what controls the experience seem to be answered when thinking of it as an interaction between several crucial systems. Finally, another main concern is the definition of a feeling. The readings clearly put consciousness as the main aspect of a feeling. Consciousness makes the experience a feeling. The central role of the body is also crucial in this definition as our feelings let us “mind the body” (Damasio, p159).

Reading Response for 3/28/07

2007-03-25T12:34:00.000-05:00

I was relieved this week to start reading about the cognitive
experience of emotions, and learn more about the distinctions between
emotion and feeling, however subjective the distinctions are (some
people don't make a distinction, I refer to Damasio's discussion).
It's interesting that sometimes we are more aware of our thought
process than other times, when we simply process information and don't
really know how we came up with something. Sometimes I enjoy trying to
trace back a certain thought or conclusion, and it can be extremely
difficult because of the myriad associations, past and present, that
are involved. Like LeDoux explained, in working memory we can
temporarily store about seven pieces of information, but each piece is
bound to have a thousand other associations along with it, like
LeDouxs' example of the seven continents and their associations. Thus,
although we may only be able to hold seven pieces of information to
compare, contrast, and process at any given moment, our brains are
simultaneously utilizing much more information that that, through the
associations which the information holds to past memories and
experiences. In both the LeDoux and Damasio reading emphasis is put on
the fact that working memory is made up of long-term memories of past
experiences, and the new information continually being gathered from
the external environment. Feelings, in LeDouxs' view, come from the
conscious recognition of the information that has been processed by
emotion systems that come to be represented in working memory.

Another important aspect of the conscious experience of emotion (i.e.
feelings) is arousal. The arousal spectrum goes from "completely
unconscious (in a coma), to asleep, to awake but drowsy, to alert, to
emotionally aroused" (LeDoux, pg. 289). LeDoux emphasizes the fact
that the level of arousal may contribute to the level of an
individuals' attention to and awareness of their emotional state. In a
highly arousing emotional state, an individual is more likely to be
fully aware of their emotional state (how they "feel"), and the
experience will be encoded as a highly emotional one, which, according
to previous readings, tells is that it will be remembered more fully
or vividly. In the same vein, Damasio feels that the essence of
conscious feelings are "that continuous monitoring, that experience of
what your body is doing while thoughts about specific contents roll
by" (Damasio, pg. 145).

While reading "The Cognitive Control of Emotion" article by Ochsner
and Gross, questions that came up for me were about ADD, and interest.
The article discussed attention and cognitive control in association
with emotion regulation, and I was wondering how this affects people
with ADD. People with ADD suffer from and attention deficit, as the
name implies, but in my experience people with this "disorder" do not
lack emotional capacity or the ability to express emotions. I also
wonder what role interest plays (because my research paper was about
interest as a primary emotion). Attention in general often has to do
with someone's interest in an object or event, whether it is positive
or negative, pleasurable or unpleasant. I question how much interest
is involved with the processing or events and how much individual
interest has to do with the processing of emotion.

Emotions and cognition

2007-03-25T11:26:00.000-05:00

There was much overlap of the topics covered in the readings for this week as both LeDoux and Damasio try to explain and understand emotions. They both talk about the evolution of life and try to consider how emotions have become such a large part of our human landscape. Damasio eloquently pulls apart the evolution of life as he explains that the very first simple organism was without a CNS and performed actions spontaneously or in response to a specific stimulus, and that in turn these actions can be characterized as the organism’s behavioral pattern. It was only later on in the progression of life on this planet that organisms developed a nervous system and a brain. He states that organisms can either have behavior but no mind, have behavior and cognition but no thinkable organism can have a mind but no action (believe in ghosts?).
He also goes through a rudimentary explanation of the brain by stating that “upstairs in the cortex there is reason and willpower, while downstairs in the subcortex there is emotion and all that weak, fleshy stuff” . The upstairs region is believed to be evolutionarily the most recent development of the brain while downstairs houses primal elements of behavior that aided us through the years of cave dwelling. He goes on to say that there has been “evidence that longevity, a likely reflection of the quality of reasoning, is correlated not only with increased size of the neocortex as expected but also with increased size of the hypothalamus, the main compartment of downstairs.” Here is where he draws a connection to the development of the structures that house rationality and emotions and states that they are both necessary to the movement in time of our species. But he also draws upon the idea while referencing William James that the mind and body are connected to each other through the bridge of emotion. This bridge is so important for the human race because it facilitates communication between people and between species.

From here I am reminded of how LeDoux concluded his book. He states at the end of chapter nine that the amygdala has more control over the cortex than the cortex has over the amygdala. He states that there are two possibilities in the future of our brain structuring. Seeing that the neocortex is ever expanding it might gain more and more control over the amygdala possibly allowing future humans to better control their emotions. He also postulates that due to the equality of connecting fibres between the neocortex and the amygdala, the future may behold a time where there is no more struggle between thought and emotions “but a more harmonious integration of reason and passion” . From here I wonder how much LeDoux would agree with Damasio’s view over the importance of emotions in the processes that he discuses extensively in part one while referencing to Phineas Gage and Elliot. I really enjoyed LeDoux book but perhaps that is where I get lost sometimes, because he does not ever really formulate his own opinions but instead covers extensively the research as it pertains to emotions and the brain. But this may be what makes him a highly revered scientific writer, as he brings together scientific facts in order to paint the landscape of emotions and the brain. I guess that is something we will cover in class in the next few weeks.

The goal of Barrett and Ochsner’s research is to identify how appraisal patterns give rise to complexities of emotional experiences, expression and regulation. I wonder why do some people respond one way to an emotional and another person acts in a seemingly different manner. Despite the argument that some of these behaviors are inherited and reinforced, and the role that memory plays in emotional responses, I still wonder about what is responsible for the marked difference in emotional behavior between people be it in automatic emotion processing or controlled emotion processing? I guess the figure on page 273 of Ledoux's book will serve as a map in understanding this dilemma as well as analyzing the their research findings in that different brain structures are responsible for different emotional behavior. I had some trouble understanding some of their findings. For example, what do they mean by “core affective life of the individual”p.29? This paper was well organized and descriptive but I feel that due to my lack of knowledge about neuroscience I would need help in understanding the research and its implications.

3.7.07

2007-03-07T00:14:00.001-05:00

The readings this week focused on an individual’s capacity to remember particular things. When I first began the readings (and particularly, in McGaugh), I wondered how memory had anything to do with emotions. Prior to this, I’ve never really made any concrete connection between the two; they’ve only seemed to be abstract concepts that have somehow indirectly related to each other. After reading chapter five, it made a little bit more sense, but I still feel as though we’re left with the question: How much should we remember? I found the issue of selectivity particularly important; memory is allegedly influenced by the impact of certain events, but what dictates the impact? Norepeniphrine, or an alternate stress hormone? We never really think about what our "brain" chooses to do (or automatically does) when any type of event happens (be it significant or insignificant). What we should and should not know, as far as memory is concerned, still seems to be out of our control; and that might be a good thing. I felt as though this reading brought up one of the key controversies in bioethics right now; that is, is it acceptable to use beta/stress blockers to "downsize" the effects of particular events, and who is capable of judging what events are worthy of this particular type of medication? Our innate biological functions seem to work as a result of some sort of evolutionary process (even though this may not be entirely proven, yet), and one has to wonder why, exactly, the brain chooses particular things to remember (whether it be September 11th, or what was for lunch last Thursday). I still feel like I’m left with no answers, and I still want a solution to the Amygdala-hippocampus debate (if there is one)!

March 7 - Memory and Emotion

2007-03-06T02:21:00.000-05:00

A common theme of this week’s readings is stress and its relation to emotion and memory. McGaugh reviews the evidence that memory consolidation can be enhanced or inhibited with drugs over a wide variety of memory tasks. For such improvement or determent to occur, the drugs must be administered soon after the task, as it has been shown that memory consolidation takes place only a short period of time after something is learned. Whether through direct or indirect action on the amygdala, memory consolidation is enhanced by stimulation and hindered by inhibition. For instance, electrical stimulation of the amygdala after training in a task improves memory. Norepinephrine release in the amygdala is also an important aid in memory consolidation. Norepinephrine levels can be increased through the differing actions of the stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol. The release of these and many other stimulating hormones and neurotransmitters can be pharmacologically induced, with the effect of aiding memory consolidation. On the other hand, if norepinephrine is inhibited by drug administration, the opposite effect (consolidation hindrance) will occur.

Artificially induced stress is not the only kind that acts on the amygdala to enhance memory. It has been shown that people have stronger and more accurate memories of emotionally arousing words, movies, and general experiences. Still, that even the most emotional and frequently revisited memories are not 100% accurate is a point that repeatedly appears in the literature. Elizabeth Loftus’s work, highlighting the realities of false memories such as being lost in a mall and being sexually abused by a baby-eating, animal-loving cult member, is a testament to this.

Stress does not always have a positive effect on memory. The failed synthesis of cortisol (?) can result in the temporary blocking of well-learned information, as in the case of a fully prepared actor forgetting his lines. In addition, prolonged levels or a single event of high stress can override the hippocampus’s attempts to keep the stress in check, thereby compromising its normal function in explicit memory. It is also possible that the memory failure is partially due to the fact that stress interferes with long-term potentiation in the hippocampus. Autopsies of monkeys living under the ever-present stress of a dominant male revealed that the structure was visibly degenerated. The impairment of the hippocampus along with an unaffected amygdala would explain why a victim might not explicitly recollect a particularly traumatic event, but still fall privy to the devastating emotions that are associated. This evidence does not put Freud’s theory of repression in a good light. LeDoux once again successfully points evolutionary importance: the amygdala is facilitated by stress and the hippocampus impaired by it so that we can react to danger rather than think about it.

Arousal of the amygdala does improve memory, but at significant costs. I substitute "arousal" for "stress" here because emotional experiences need not be "stressful," per say, to be firmly established in memory; LaBar and Cabeza note that amygdala activation during encoding correlates positively with delayed recall accuracy for emotionally arousing pictures that are both attractive and aversive. Nevertheless, it is tempting to conclude that traumatic memories are the ones that have the most powerful effect on memory. Whether taken from a psychoanalytic or behavioral stance, anxiety is the result of traumatic learning experiences. Anxiety disorders like phobias, panic, PTSD, and OCD are fairly common problems that are all related to fear conditioning, and they have no easy solution. LeDoux proposes a few possibilities as to why these conditions are particularly resistant to extinction in humans: abnormal functioning of the medial prefrontal cortex, which also may be due to stress; evolutionary "preparedness" to fear things that were dangerous to our ancestors; and, perhaps most interestingly, "cell assemblies" of spontaneously firing neurons that result from Hebbian learning (conditioning), which, again, may be strengthened merely with stress.

A few questions I have about the readings:
-To what extent is the medial prefrontal cortex different in people with anxiety disorders? In addition to its mediation of extinction, the PFC is involved in decision making and higher thinking. Are there any drugs that improve this structure’s performance?
-What is known about the learning/performance distinction that McGaugh avoids talking about? Damasio’s patient Elliot, who had PFC damage, seemed to lack behavioral but not cognitive knowledge.
-McGaugh notes that it is unlikely that animals explicitly rehearse training experience. But don’t their hippocampal abilities indicate that they can?
-Labar & Cabeza article differentiates between encoding and consolidation. What is the difference between the two?
-I’m sure it differs on an individual basis, but are there any neural markers that predict stress-induced hipoocampal failure?

emotional remembering

2007-03-06T00:27:00.000-05:00

All of the readings for this week seemed to focus on the formation and recall of emotional memories. We have examined how basic memories are formed, but these readings focused on particularly intense or traumatic situations. There were moments when I felt like a lot of my questions about memory were being answered in fantastic ways and other moments when I was absolutely confused and didn’t want to be. For example, McGaugh’s section “Nothing like a little stress” (McGaugh, 97) covered a lot about the relationship between norepinephrine, epinephrine and the amygdala. The primary discussion revolved around how the releasing of stress hormones increases the intensity of a memory. There was a lot about the exact process that I would like to know about, but I’m still pretty confused after reading it over several times. I understand the implications of stress hormones on the intensity of memory that he discussed during those few pages, and I’m just lost as to the exact process of how that occurs.

On this same issue, LeDoux points out that slight stress can enhance a memory, due to the release of adrenaline. He attributes this to the increasing activity of the amygdala under stress. On the contrary, the hippocampus falters under stress, which explains memory loss in exceptionally intense situations. He continues his discussion noting, “If indeed the hippocampus is impaired and the amygdala facilitated by stress, it would suggest the possibility that stress shifts us into a mode of operation in which we react to danger rather than think about it.” (LeDoux, 247) This reminded me of last week’s reading, which discussed how when a person is confronted with a threatening situation, their body reacts to the threat before processing what is going on and how to respond to it. I wondered if this fact that “stress shifts us into a mode of operation” would be related to the fact that the amygdala processes innate danger through implicit memory and the hippocampus responds more practically (as in deciding a course of action) as through explicit memory.

The accuracy of our memories was another theme that interested me, as when McGaugh discussed “creative remembering.” (McGaugh, 115) We began addressing this last week in class, through a discussion about how memories can become skewed upon trying to recall them. It is a natural effect, because our new experiences will inevitably affect how we remember old events. I definitely think it’s interesting that the context in which we recall something affects how we think something occurred. It is tempting to think of memories as “imprints” of past experiences and to think that there are certain events that will always stay with you exactly as they occurred. Memory is certainly more deceptive than I realized before beginning all this research.

response for week 8

2007-03-05T17:53:00.001-05:00

In chapter five of McGaugh we are presented with a greater articulation of the concept of “flashbulb memory” developed by Roger Brown and James Kulik. Flashbulb memory, as the word “flashbulb” would seem to suggest, is not photographic and does not provide accurate or complete memories necessarily. Flashbulb memory seems to be an umbrella term for strong, semantic memories that stem from an intense emotional experience, one that can be referred to in a more or less concise way. They are vivid and clear in the sense that whatever happened to structure these memories contained intense emotional content. This idea seems to be the most significant in the relationship between memory and emotion throughout our readings for this week because, as most of the data presented in LeDoux, McGaugh and the LaBar and Cabeza article suggests, the process to determine what we remember, how we remember it, and what physically and psychologically happens in the event and the progression following it, is tied to an emotional arousal occurring during or after a significant experience.
I found McGaugh’s study of the use of drugs on this effect to be very interesting and simultaneously confusing. He studied the use of stimulants, adrenalin boosters, and beta-blockers in lab rats to determine if said drugs affected the memory process. What he found was that the stimulants did increase the ability to learn and memorize and that the beta-blockers had the opposite effect. Further in his research, he also found a direct relation to the use of these drugs in the amygdala and the hippocampus supporting his claim that the emotional impact on memory is also significant. McGaugh also suggested that applying this data to humans would prove effective, i.e. giving beta-blockers to patients admitted into the ER after experiencing a traumatic event (like a car crash) might suppress, to some extent, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because the process of remembering would be stifled. While this is an interesting claim, I couldn’t help but think about the previous distinction of memory versus learning/performance. We haven’t yet begun to figure out the complexity of what exactly makes up a memory (in humans or animals) therefore the exaggeration or repression of them (within a specific episode) seems unlikely at this point and time. It seems kind of obvious to me that stress hormones would increase an awareness of an event that would lead to a more detailed memory, but how would this process turn out in a study of long term memory? More significantly, how would this process relate to flashbulb memory in a study where participants had to be administered the drug immediately after experiencing a significantly stressful event? How would you calculate this?
Another point that I found interesting in the readings was McGaugh’s reference to remembering as a “creative act” (p. 115). How we remember and what we remember ties to our creative processes because of our nature, as humans, to be storytellers. This kind of relates to our discussion last week of mnemonics, yet the inherent process to develop stories and believe them as truths is interesting in relation to our discussion of integrated/non-integrated memory. I often find that certain memories I feel that I had were really memories of my sister’s, who, being a great storyteller, would present her experiences in such a vivid way that I would visualize them and interpret them as my own at a very early age. This is similar to Sir Frederic Bartlett’s idea that we sometimes include coherence in our narrative tellings of events in sacrifice of accuracy. It also ties to the study we read about in McGaugh to convince children that they got lost in a supermarket and consequently provide them with a false memory.
Another idea that is not necessarily related to this, but I found interesting seeing that its kind of similar to gestalt psychology, is LaBar and Cabeza’s use of the term “central gist” in describing emotionally arousing experiences. By this I think they mean the general emotional content of a remembered experience as opposed to specific details. I would really like to see this point developed more in understanding how we might fuse emotional memories, or construct details out of a “central gist” as opposed to the actual details in an event.

Reading Response 3/4/07

2007-03-05T01:11:00.000-05:00

Our readings last week in LeDoux and McGaugh discussed the processes of memory and underlying biological systems. The readings this week went into greater detail about the role of the amygdala in affectively implicated memory. Drawing on a body of research, LeDoux and McGaugh suggest a model of the amygdala as exerting influence over other brain structures such as the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe to prioritize memories based on their emotional significance. In particular, the authors focus on research using stress hormones which illustrate the amygdala's powerful role in modulating memory consolidation for fearful experiences. I'd also like to address some issues associated with extinction in greater depth.

Stress hormones such as glucocortocoids and epinephrine play a central role in the 'fight or flight' response evoked in conditioned fear learning experiences. Observations that post training injections of stress hormones enhance memory storage suggest that endogenous stress hormones released during fear conditioning are important for the formation of memories and amplify fear responses.

Research on PTSD and repressed memories also indicate that extreme stress may lead to an inability to consciously access memories although an emotional response still exists. The effect of high levels of stress resulting from traumatic emotional events, LeDoux notes, may result in damage to the hippocampus and, consequently, the inability to form explicit memories although the effects of the amygdala's memory consolidation prevail. It is interesting to note, however, that most of the research focusing on effects of stress have only dealt with prolonged exposure to stress instead of isolated traumatic experiences. It is unclear whether a single traumatic event can cause a great enough stress response to impair the hippocampus. Nevertheless, findings strongly suggest that the amygdala's capacity to consolidate experiences into powerful unconscious agents override the organism's ability to control their response.

I would have liked McGaugh, LeDoux, La Bar and Cabeza's explanations of memory extinction to describe the processes of extinction in greater detail (to be fair, LeDoux says he'll come back to it). From what I can gather, extinction is the process of learning to disassociate a stimulus with a conditioned response. In the case of auditory Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats, the animal would learn to associate an auditory cue with a neutral experience instead of a painful one. This idea is interesting for a number of reasons. First, I think it implies that extinction has nothing to do with forgetting a memory, but is actually a unique learning process. Secondly, in order for extinction to occur, the brain must associate the previously learned context with a new context, which is why animals are highly resistant to extinction when hippocampal damage exists. LeDoux mentions that extinction relies on the connections between the medial temporal cortex and amygdala. As the animal learns to consolidate a new context for the stimulus does this require recalling and comparing the memories? What would happen if an aversive emotional response was replaced with a pleasurable one?

And finally, our readings emphasized memories associated with negative emotions, such as fear. Does the amygdala play as influential a role in memory for pleasurable responses? Are memories associated with pain more powerful than pleasurable responses because there is a greater incentive for the survival of the organism? What about sex?

Reading Response to 3/4/2007

2007-03-04T21:04:00.000-05:00

I notice a common thread that runs through all three of the readings for this week. The authors attempt to determine the involvement of certain brain regions and structures on the creation, retention, and retrieval of memory. However, each author uses a different method in their examination of brain regions and structures involved in memory. The paper “Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotional Memory” examines the brain systems involved in forming, keeping, and retrieving memories using emotional arousal. LeDoux uses anxiety disorders to help explain brain systems and their involvement in memory. McGaugh uses drugs to show how activation occurs in certain regions of the brain in memory. Although each author attacks the issue of memory differently, all of them add something new to our limited knowledge of memory and the brain regions involved.

In “Cognitive neuroscience of emotional memory”, LeBar and Cabeza found evidence that “emotional arousal benefits memory in part by facilitating consolidation processes”(LeBar & Cabeza 55). This means that arousal is important in molding and consolidating new memories. Using PET and fMRI studies, the researchers traced the impact of emotion events at various stages of memory. They discovered that specific brain regions are involved in various aspects of memory; from initial formation, to retaining and to retrieving. LeBar and Cabeza found the most important of these structures is the amygdala which is involved in encoding memories, retrieving memories, and fear conditioning.

LeDoux investigates the effects of anxiety on various aspects of memory. He shows how anxiety and stress cause problems in brain structures involved in memory. “Stressful events can cause malfunctions in the hippocampus… the failure to recall an instigating trauma may be due to a stress-induced breakdown in hippocampal memory function”(LeDoux 240). Stress interferes with the hippocampus and blocks the formation of new memories by shriveling up the dendrites involved in memory formation in the hippocampus. In survivors of severe trauma, the person’s hippocampus has permanently shrunken causing significant memory defects. Anxiety inhibits brain structures that contribute to the memory process.

McGaugh investigates what effect drugs have on memory. He states that “drugs are highly useful as tools in determining the involvement and role(s) of different brain regions in memory consolidation” (McGaugh 71). McGaugh tests the effects of strychnine on a rat’s performance in a maze test. After successfully completing the maze test, half of the rats were injected with saline and the other half were injected with strychnine. The saline rats performed the maze test successfully after a three hour delay. The strychnine rats performed the maze test successfully after a nine hour delay. The strychnine enhanced the memory of the rats. McGaugh goes on to test other drugs and their effects on brain structures. McGaugh injects various drugs into the amygdale, hippocampus, and other related brain regions and observes the results. He discovers that the amygdala is crucial in the involvement of consolidating memories. The hippocampus and caudate nucleus selectively affect place learning and cue learning. Norepinephrine actions in the amygdala play an important role in the creation of memories. His discoveries increase our understanding of how certain regions and structures in the brain affect memory formation and function.

All three readings help to shed light on our limited understanding of memory and how it is created, retained, and retrieved. The authors approach the study of memory with different tools and from different perspectives. However, each author makes new discoveries or confirms previous findings about the nature of memory. They share the common goal of broadening the field of memory research.

LaBar, K.S. & Cabeza, R. (2006). Cognitive neuroscience of emotional memory. Nature Neuroscience Reviews, 7, 54-64.

LeDoux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain. Simon & Schuster: New York. Chapter 8

McGaugh, J.L. (2003). Memory and Emotion. New York: Columbia. Chapter 4

LeDoux- neuroscientist or rockstar?

2007-03-01T11:34:00.000-05:00

It turns out the Joseph LeDoux is a neuroscientist... and a musician! His laboratory webpage has a bunch of audio and video clips of his group, The Amygdaloids, performing their songs. LeDoux writes the songs and sings on a couple of the tracks, which are all about the brain and emotions! This is so corny and awesome. The link is embedded in the title of this post.

-Also, it might be my bad internet connection, but the videos weren't playing for me.

Chess' Response to Memory Readings

2007-02-27T03:10:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings focused on the purpose and process of memory and the specific structures associated with it. They sought to emphasis the vital role of memory in both humans and animals.

In McGaugh's "Memory and Emotion,” he agrees with other psychologists who state that rehearsal of information or skills creates stronger memories. Actually, others go so far as to suggest that emotionally intense experiences are remembered so vividly only because they are recalled often. McGaugh argues for the role of emotional arousal. In his preface, he mentions that in medieval times, before writing was used to keep historical records, other means had to be found in order to maintain record of important events. One such method was to select a child around seven years of age and instruct him to watch the proceedings very carefully. Afterwards, he was thrown into a river.
Just as victims of plane crashes and car accidents can testify, the child’s memory was almost always remarkably vivid and enduring. McGaugh asserts that emotional arousal activates stress hormones that regulate the consolidation of recently acquired information in separate brain regions. This makes sense when we consider our most vivid memories (referring here to explicit, declarative or conscious memories). People will not likely remember what they had for breakfast three Tuesdays prior, however a near death experience will stay with us forever. From an evolutionary perspective, this ability to remember emotionally charged events is highly advantageous. To use his example, it’s beneficial for the rabbit to remember where the fox lives and how s/he escaped from it.
However, McGaugh does note explicit memories’ selective nature. He agrees that this selectivity is critically important. However, he also recognizes that while emotional significance is great for creating enduring memories, they are not necessarily accurate ones.
Finally, McGaugh notes the differences in long and short-term memory. Interestingly, he believes that recent (short-term) and remote memories (long-term) are based on different process, rather than the same process differing only in durability. As his several case studies seem to prove, long-term memory does not require short-term memory. Lasting memories are not created instantly, but rather consolidate over time. Additionally, his research suggests that explicit (a.k.a. declarative or conscious) and implicit (a.k.a. nondeclarative, unconscious, or procedural) are also the result of separate processes.

Dolcos et al.’s experiment on the role of the amygdala and the medial temporal lobe memory system in retrieving emotional memories also yielded several interesting results. However I had so many problems with the methodology, I cannot accept the results too readily. Although I have several issues with this experiment, particularly their belief of a single year constituting as “long term,” my primary problem concerns their use of only nine (9!) females subjects, chosen because “ . . . compared with men, women are physiologically more reactive than to emotional stimuli and are more likely to report intense emotional experiences.” (Dolcos et al. 2627) This statement is grossly incorrect. Physiologically speaking, women generally respond more to disgusting or saddening imagery while men respond much, much more to threatening or aggressive images. (Barrett et al. 2006) (Verona & Curtin 2006) (Wagner & Ochsner 2004) (Wagner et al. 2005) etc. etc. As far as women being “more likely to report intense emotional experiences,” this only demonstrates the experimenter’s inherit bias and the subjects' compliance to current social norms regarding the description of emotional experiences, which vary greatly according to culture and individual differences. (Ellsworth & Yamaguchi 2006) (Wagner & Ochsner 2004)
That aside, the article did do a satisfactory job proving the memory-enhancing effecta of emotion. It also successfully explained the stages of the process of memory: (1) encoding: the creation of new memory traces, (2) consolidation and storage: the stabilization and persistence of these memories, and finally, (3) retrieval: the final access to these stored memories. (Dolcos et al. 2005 2) In the experiment, every one of the whopping nine subjects was shown both neutral and emotionally charged images one year earlier. Afterwards, they were again shown images in order to discover the effect of emotion on their memory recollection and familiarity in addition to the specific brain structures responsible. However, in order to fully understand the experiments results, it is important to first differentiate between the two forms of episodic memory retrieval: recollection (explicit memory) and familiarity (implicit memory). “Recollection refers to memory for an event that is accompanied by the retrieval of contextual information and other associated elements, whereas familiarity refers to the feeling that an event happened in the past, but no associated information can be retrieved.” (Dolcos et al. 2005 2) The emotional images were predictably remembered better, however this memory-enhancing effect only affected recollection, while familiarity remained uninfluenced. This successful retrieval of emotional images caused greater activity in the amygdala, entorhinal cortex, and hippocampus than the neutral ones. “Moreover, in the amygdala and hippocampus, the emotion effect was greater for recollection than for familiarity, whereas in the entorhinal cortex, it was similar in both forms of retrieval. (Dolcos et al. 2005 2)

Finally, there was LeDoux’s discussion of memory. Typical of his style, he cited the evolutionary reasons behind our current processes of memory and our learned responses to those memories, citing numerous examples from animal behavior. He played particular attention to fear responses and our ability (and apparently animal’s ability as well) to especially remember experiences that caused us fear. He also paid special attention to the amygdala and it various components in order to discover the various function(s) of each of the brain’s separate structure. I continually find it strange that although LeDoux repeatedly criticizes earlier psychologists for attempting to assign specific brain structures with specific roles, he too spends a large majority of his argument doing the same.

Reading Response for 2/28

2007-02-26T04:16:00.000-05:00

In the readings for this week, both McGaugh and LeDoux look at learning and memory mechanisms that are shared with animals (uncovered largely through experiments done on animals) and discuss what about them is adaptive.

One aspect of memory that McGaugh discusses is the fact that long-term memory involves consolidation over a long period of time. He believes that this long period of consolidation is adaptive because it allows the subsequent neurobiological processes to affect how strong a memory is. He points out that this feature of consolidating long-term memory is shared with rats, birds, bees, mollusks and fish and “…clearly emerged early in evolution and was conserved” presumably because it worked well.

Linking emotional response and learning, LeDoux discusses in depth that the fear response makes quick learning possible, and the learning will persist for a long period of time. Just one exposure to a conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus pairing is enough for an animal to show conditioned fear and this association will persist, as evolution has ensured that animals will quickly learn what can threaten their survival and retain the memory in order to be able to draw on this knowledge in future situations. The work of Dolcos et. al. establishes that in fact people do more easily retrieve memories that are more emotional for them. It seems very efficient of the memory system to make it easy for people to retrieve those memories that feel important to the individual and that it may be necessary for him to reflect on.

Implicit memory is another system in the brain that seems to have protective value much like the quick pathway in the fear response system. McGaugh and LeDoux both give examples of how working and implicit memory works even in amnesic patients, like H.M. who are unable to consolidate long-term memories. Le Doux gives the example of the patient whose doctor pricked her with a tack when shaking her hand one day and how the patient, without remembering the incident, refused to shake his hand again. Both LeDoux and McGaugh gives example from the research of Elizabeth Warrington and Lawrence Weiskrantz who showed that amnesic patients who were shown full pictures of objects on three days of testing could subsequenty identify the objects correctly from just fragments of the pictures as well as others. Through their behavior these people all show learning that they don’t explicitly recall. It is interesting that our brains contain basic systems that underlie more complex systems which, when they are unharmed, persist even when higher systems are damaged. It seems highly adaptive that there is a mechanism in place that enables people to learn from experiences in a way that guides future behavior even when they have lost the ability to consciously evaluate those experiences. Even the injured brain is still doing the best it can to help them survive.

These descriptions of implicit memory make me think of the ideas expressed in our readings on the early relationship between a non-verbal infant and caregiver. These early experiences are not something that a child will explicitly remember but she will learn from them nonetheless. And Le Doux makes the point that implicit memories tend to be long-lasting. He also mentions that due to the implicit memory system, people can be cued in such a way that they have an emotional reaction without knowing explicitly why. The amygdala can be set off and create a physical feeling in the body so that you “find yourself in the throes of an emotional state that exists for reasons you do not quite understand.” For these reasons, (and more) early experiences may be very much with a person as she develops and may operate as a very powerful though unfathomable force.

I find the implicit memory system overall to be mysterious and am still mulling over the idea that traces of prior experiences affect our reactions and our behavior without our awareness. I wonder if there are ways to make something that is in the realm of implicit memory known to ourselves explicitly or to change it? Is the implicit memory system as active in people whose memories are intact? I would like to know more about the ways in which different emotions have implicit and explicit components.

Reading Response 2/28/07.

2007-02-26T00:54:00.000-05:00

The most common theme throughout each of this week’s readings was the emphasis placed by the authors on the vital importance of memory – not only for the ability to learn various facts and figures, but to survive – as memory is a critical link to the defense mechanisms of all animals in the presence of any and all perceived danger. The articles also explore structural components of the brain that facilitate these memory processes.

In Chapter 6 and 7 of "The Emotional Brain," LeDoux places a strong emphasis on the link between emotionally charged (and often frightening) experiences and our "...specific patterns of neural wiring..." that allow our bodies to react appropriately when similar events occur - and thus escape from the danger they could potentially bring (Le Doux 141). This fear conditioning allows humans and animals to respond to threatening situations through the development of physiological responses (such as freezing, heightened heart rate and blood pressure, and the release of stress hormones into the bloodstream) which can provide a life-saving escape route when one's life is in jeopardy. And, as LeDoux illustrates, these responses can be seen as much in wild animals escaping predators to a human's sweaty palms, increased heart rate, and dry mouth when she expects she is being followed by a stranger. LeDoux later goes on to explain how damage to the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped region in the forebrain, prevents these conditioned reactions from occuring. And in Chapter 7, it is shown that one of the most unique aspects of our emotional memory system is how it can (and often does) function with a lack of "...explicit conscious memory of the emotional learning experience...", creating an almost reflexive response to similar events that occur in the future (182).

In McGaugh's "Memory and Emotion," we are again shown the necessity of memory to survival. Described as the "...consequence of learning from an experience," McGaugh also addresses the brain's selectivity in remembering certain types of events more readily than others (McGaugh 7). But most importantly, McGaugh addresses why "...emotionally arousing experiences..." are the memories most favored (McGaugh 7). In this, McGaugh discusses the adaptive qualities in remembering our most emotional experiences - not only to protect ourselves from the dangers LeDoux describes - but to encourage personal progress by recalling our successes. And through McGaugh's thorough exploration of the emotional memory in animals, he simultaneously links the findings to how these same emotional systems operate in humans.

Lastly, in the study by Dolcos, LaBar, and Cabeza, we are again emotional memories are better remembered than neutral memories, as the amygdala and medial temporal lobe memory systems are most affective when used to recollect emotional experiences.

While it is clear that emotional memories have a distinct impact on the memory systems of the brain, I would be interested in further discussing how the brain selects which emotional experiences to store and discard, and how certain traumatic emotional experiences manage to be successfully forgotten (such as rape) while others are always present (such as 9/11). How do these memories, both conscious and repressed, function in PTSD patients? Also, I would be interested in understanding more how traumatic events from one's early life impact their adult years, even as they do not consciously recall what has occurred.

2007-02-25T23:44:00.001-05:00

This week’s readings focused specifically on picking apart the complexity of memory and the structures within the brain that are associated with conscious and unconscious remembering. In these readings the authors start to unwind the different forms of memory and their inherent connection to emotion.

In the first three chapters of James McGaugh’s Memory and Emotion he emphasizes the importance of memory in our lives, not only as a form of self-kept documentation of our own experiences but also as a necessary part of learning from those experiences. The ability to consolidate and store our current experiences is essential to learning. Without this ability, functioning from day to day is extremely difficult. H.M, a patient whose case is one of the most well studied cases of memory loss, has provided some of the most critical aspects of memory. In order to relieve his seizures his entire temporal lobe, including the hippocampus, amygdala and the caudate. This resulted in severe memory impairment, which prevented him from making new memories. However, other tests with H.M. showed that some aspects of memory and learning are still intact, revealing the fact that the hippocampus is not necessarily the only region of the brain in which implicit learning takes place. One of McGaugh’s main focuses was on the fact that memory has different forms, more specifically, short term and long term memory.

LeDoux links memory more directly to emotions and emotional responses. In chapter six he talks about the connection between a stimulus and an emotion. He uses the example of a rat that is placed in a cage, an electric shot to the feet is administered, paired with a sound. The rat, when hearing the sound produces the same emotional response that it would have if the shock was being administered. ‘Fear conditioning’ is absolutely necessary for survival, without it our defense system is nil. This greatly supports the original idea that emotional responses were originally used for survival. When approached by a predator the autonomic nervous system is activated, producing a physical response in defense. LeDoux also talks about the selectivity of memory. In his findings it seems that an individual much more likely to remember something that evoked a strong emotional response rather than an event that has no emotional significance. The brain is also selective in what aspects of the memory are clearer than others. Memories are also not exact copies of an event. It seems most likely that the act of remembering an event produces a similar emotional response as to when you were experiencing it, which has the potential to influence your recollection of that event. These holes in memory are things I found the most intriguing. Evolutionarily, what is the advantage to only remembering certain details about an event? What is the advantage to exaggerating the details?

The study done by Dolcos, LaBar and Cabeza focused specifically on the ability to recall emotional or neural pictures over a period of one year. They were specifically looking for brain activity within the amygdala. They took nine young female adults and selected neural and emotional images. Each image was shown as the MRI machine took an image of their brain. They were told to rate the picture from 1-3, 1 being unpleasant and 3 pleasant. One year later the test was repeated with new and old images. The subjects were asked to press ‘know,’ ‘remember’ or ‘new.’ The ending results yielded (as predicted) a greater recognition and emotional reading than the neutral ones. Evolutionarily, it seems obvious that we should develop in a way that we would be more likely to remember the emotionally charged events in our lives. If memory is the ‘consequence of learning from an experience’ as James McGaugh has said, we would do best to learn from those experiences where we felt the most.

Reading Response for 2/21/07

2007-02-21T00:15:00.000-05:00

Bettina Barbier

The Feeling Brain

How Do Emotions Develop?

The articles for this week deal mainly with how a growing child’s mind and emotions develop and what kinds of things influence that development.

At issue in asking how mind and emotions develop along with a growing child are several separate areas of inquiry: first, how does the primary, tangible substrate for those emotions develop, by which is meant the physical brain itself; second, how and from what does the mind by which the emotions are expressed arise, and thirdly, how do the emotions themselves come to be?

Daniel Siegel begins his analysis of the development of the mind with the physical brain. He relates the development of the child’s brain to the mind of the parent or caregiver, in a process where non-physical and non-genetic elements and processes actually, in some ways, give rise to the physical brain.

Siegel uses a sculptural metaphor to set forth his conception of the process of physical development and non-physical influence upon it. In “experience-expectant” development, he says, neuronal material develops, made up of neurons and synapses, a kind of un-carved block of material from which experience will sculpt – literally and physically – the final compliment of neurons and neuronal connections, and the layout of the brain. This sculpting process gives rise to the substrate upon which further development will occur throughout the lifespan of the individual. (Siegel, 72.)

The gist of the argument at this point is that proper attachment to caregivers will foster the healthy development of the brain, mind, and emotions, but that improper attachment will not: “Disuse (“use-it-or-lose-it”) or toxic conditions, such as with excessive stress (as in child abuse) can lead to the elimination of existing synapses” (72). He introduces another concept, that of “experience-dependant” development, in which new neural connections are made through experience. In this he offers hope for those who did not receive the quality of connection that he lays out as necessary to develop certain brain structures and mind qualities, saying that “ . . . this period may not be the “last chance” for ongoing development in these areas . . . “ (73) even while making it clear that “ . . . it is a time when basic circuitry is being established for the first time” (73). So proper connection is privileged above later experience, but if it is not gotten, at least all is not lost.

In calling attention to child-rearing practices in which children are “bombard[ed] . . . with excessive sensory stimulation in hopes of making better brains” (72), Seigel weighs in with a well-argued if lengthy position on the issue of quantity versus quality in terms of communication with the developing child. Clearly, quality wins.

Like others we have read, Siegel closely examines areas of the brain and relates them to discrete elements of function, and he synthesizes several researchers’ work into support for his own theory of neuronal integration. As many have done, he takes great pains to locate the brain in the body, and refers to the element of connection to the rest of the body as an essential part of what he calls “mind” , relating this solidly to emotions.

One question that Siegel’s discussion raises for me is whether the kind of neural substrate that develops under sub-optimal conditions may actually be more advantageous, from an evolutionary standpoint, for a child living in such conditions to possess, than the kind of neural structure that would develop under more optimal conditions. This may seem counterintuitive, but all children learn how to live in their specific environments, and that learning lets them function and survive within them to the best of their ability.

Is it possible that the kind of neural structures which children in sub-optimal conditions develop due to certain features of their environment likewise let them function and survive better in their specific situation? For example, might a child living in a harsh environment but possessing the kind of neural architecture that normally develops in a more nurturing climate be too sensitive to the depredations of that environment, and thus be more open to greater hurts and wounds? This is not to suggest that such development or learning is optimal, only that it may be more suited to a certain set of circumstances such that individuals possessing such structural forms in those circumstances may survive to pass on their genes better than those possessing other structural forms under the same conditions.

Siegel’s work is disturbing to read, in that it is difficult not to think about the implications for survivors of child abuse. If he is correct, then these children will suffer more than the pain of the abuse in the moment, or psychological difficulties later in life; their very intelligence and ability to function may be forever limited by their earliest experiences regardless of efforts they may make through therapy or similar treatments.

Michael Lewis, in “The Emergence of Human Emotions”, compares and contrasts a number of theories in search of a theory of development. He makes a case for a combination of experiential, cognitive developmental processes and “pre-wired” emotional circuitry present at birth. What his paper brings out the most is the extent to which more evidence and data are needed for any of the many theories and ideas about how emotion develops and is experienced in humans.

I disagreed with many of his statements and conclusions. For example, in his example involving a car accident, he tries to make the case that the driver did not experience her fear until after the danger was over. I disagree.

When my car hit black ice and traversed Interstate 84 from the far left lane across the middle and right lanes, doing three 360 degree revolutions on the way across, and finally bounced about 5 times off of the retaining fence, turning each time it bounced to hit in another place, I experienced several very remarkable sensations that can only have come from the basic emotion of fear. First of all, the entire incident happened, in my perception, in extreme slow motion. My mind reacted to an immediate adrenaline response, and became much more alert and quick than usual. Time seemed to slow down, but in reality it was simply that I was noticing much more about every moment, so it appeared to happen more slowly.

Second, there was no sound at all until the car had stopped moving entirely. My body routed all sensation to the one sense that would help me in this case, that of sight. Although my car certainly made a great deal of noise bouncing off the retaining fence, if not in its trip laterally across the road, I heard nothing at all until the sound of a fellow traveler tapping on my window afterward. My visual recollection of the event, however, is crystal clear, and very colorful.

Like James McGaugh’s medieval boy, thrown in the river to embed an important event in his memory the length of his life (McGaugh, ix), the accident is imprinted upon my memory in “living color”.

All of these were direct experiences of fear, although not ones I was familiar with as such. I am certain they were induced by the same bodily changes so many of the authors we have read attribute to the bodily side of emotion. They were not as easy to identify as the shaking hands, pounding heart and other somatic sensations I experienced once the car had come to rest and I’d had a moment to really think about what had happened, but they were a form of fear none the less, and I experienced them fully. Had I been in the wilderness and confronted by a large predator, I am sure that I would have acquired the ability to run very fast, or the strength to climb a tree quickly, or whatever else my brain and body decided I should do in what Damasio describes as emotion “ . . . making living beings act smartly without having to think smartly” (Damasio, xi).

Paul Harris looks at children’s understanding of emotion. He discusses a variety of developmental issues around emotion, such as how children report their own emotions and those of others, their memories of emotional incidents, and attachment theory in terms of language about and understanding of emotion.

I think that one of Harris’s most compelling and successful arguments is his relation of children’s facility with and knowledge about emotion, to popularity among other children. Correlating the real-life reactions of other children to the relative popularity of their peers, which are probably very likely to be extremely genuine, with a child’s results on various emotional tests, seems like a very good way to diagnose the validity of the tests and judge whether certain developmental experiences effect social development in the context of emotional development. I also very much appreciated that he cautioned against accepting these findings too easily, as he points out that “Acceptance by peers may increase children’s opportunities for learning abut emotion” (Harris, 288).

He offers many real-life-based examples to illustrate the points he is trying to make, which makes his work eminently readable, and displays a warm adn perceptive view of the human side of his subjects. He also seems to approach his premises and those of others in an extremely thoughtful manner. He often points out where very plausible-seeming reasoning may in fact be flawed. He also discusses some “ . . . emotional processes that may escape our awareness, but reveal themselves nonetheless via telltale facial expressions or various psychophysiological indices” (281). Here he grants a certain agency and dignity to the self, in keeping open the possibility that people may sense and know more than can be measured by testing and theorizing.

Ultimately, Harris sees the development of emotion as a resilient process, that may be interrupted but which is likely to proceed even if its end state is less than optimal (290). His emphasis on the importance of communication and rumination either at the time of development or later in the form of therapy or private journaling strikes another hopeful note, and his general attitude seems to be one of respect for the people he writes about.

Reading Response for 2/21/07

2007-02-19T00:29:00.001-05:00

Jake Szczypek
Reading Response #2
2/18/07
Attachment and the Emergence of Emotions

This week’s readings focused on the complex issue of emotional development in children. Siegel (2001), in particular, focused on attachment theory and the role of parental involvement in a child’s emotional maturation. I found his article to be of quite interest as it analyzed what, exactly, a secure attachment provides for an infants’ emotional functioning.
According to Siegel (2001), collaboration is a key component in the early stages of communication between an infant and his/her caregiver. Through the use of nonverbal signals, a caregiver and child can “connect” in a way that allows both individuals to “‘feel felt’ by the other” (Siegel, pp.78, 2001). The second major component in developing secure attachment is the “verbal sharing of a focus on the internal experience of each member of the dyad” (Siegel, pp.79, 2001). This form of communication is referred to as reflective dialogue, and allows for a child’s development of “mindsight.” The third component, repair, informs the child that communication will inevitably contain misunderstandings that will have to be identified in order to re-establish a sense of connectedness. Coherent narratives, the fourth component, are essential in developing a child’s autobiographical sense of self. And lastly, emotional communication is essential “in creating the foundation for a positive attitude toward the self and others” (Siegel, pp.79, 2001).
While I found these five elements of secure attachment to be helpful in understanding the important role caregivers play in the emotional development of children, it also made the concept of secure attachment seem overly simple. I tend to agree with Siegel’s (2001) notion that without the development of a secure attachment a child is not as likely to form “enhanced emotional flexibility, social functioning, and cognitive abilities” (Siegel, pp.77, 2001). However, I also think that a secure attachment can’t be the only determining factor in a child’s emotional stability.
According to Harris (2000), the greater coherence and degree of reflection in a mother’s description of her own attachment directly correlates to a greater “assessment of emotion understanding” in her child (Harris, pp.284, 2000). Thus, Harris and Siegel seem to agree that the Adult Attachment Interview studies indicate that a caregiver’s ability to talk about his/her emotions greatly influences the child’s own emotional development.
Furthermore, I found The Emergence of Human Emotions to be the most compelling article in this week’s readings. Lewis’ (2000) discussion of the development from emotional states, to emotional expressions, and then to emotional experiences was quite fascinating. While Harris and Siegel clearly embraced the standpoint of attachment theorists, Lewis brought forth the idea that emotional development might be biologically programmed and that a child’s emotional development will progress in a specific manner regardless of the outside environment. Lewis (2000) discusses this specifically referring to the differentiation of emotion states. Although further research must be done in order to determine whether emotional development is biologically predetermined or not, it is clear that familial input is a factor.
Siegel and Lewis both give examples of “transgenerational trauma” where a cyclical pattern develops between the caregiver and the child through multiple generations (Siegel, pp.78, 2001). I found this to be especially interesting because it indicates how truly affected we are, as infants, by our attachment figure(s). Additionally, Siegel (2001) mentioned how the development of the corpus callosum, and even the brain as a whole, can be greatly impaired when a child experiences abuse.
Lastly, I found the example that Lewis (2000) used to distinguish emotional states from emotional experiences to be worthy of noting. He described a woman losing control of her car and yet not experiencing fear until after the event. I understand that Lewis is saying the woman did not have a chance to consciously recognize her fear prior to stopping the car, but I have little doubt that she didn’t, on some level, sense the somatic changes occurring in her face (and body as a whole) while entering the state of fear. I have lost control of my car and I believe I experienced fear during the event, as well as after the event. Is this because I was attentive to my emotional state and could thus experience the emotion at the same time? Am I confusing emotional state and experience? Is it not conceivable that one can be conscious of an emotional state while also being cognitively aware of an emotional expression and experience?

Reading Response for 02/21/07

2007-02-18T17:29:00.000-05:00

Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt
The Feeling Brain

This week’s reading focused less on emotions as physical expressions and discussed emotions as more conscious, socially influenced, and subjective experiences. These articles focused on emotional experience verses emotional states, and made a clear distinction between the two. An emotional state is a response to a stimulus that causes physical arousal and can often be un-conscious. An emotional experience is the internalization of a feeling and simultaneously connecting that feeling to a situation, event, or stimulus and is a conscious act that requires a sense of personal awareness. Ito have an emotional experiences knowledge of the self is required, and is implicit in a statement such as ‘I am happy’.
Michael Lewis, Paul Harris, and Daniel J. Siegel focus on identifying various stages of emotional transformation and development that accompany the maturation process. In isolating various stages of emotional development and factors that influence those stages, physiologists and biologists can better understand what is involved in internal, emotional representation. Emotional experiences and stages of self-awareness become more complex as we develop, and are strongly influenced by social interaction and parental care.
From birth to adulthood our emotional expressions change drastically. In the course of three years (from birth to age three) an infant will undergo a tremendous amount of emotional growth, and at each stage of development identifying an ‘emotional elicitor’ becomes increasingly complicated. Michael Lewis identifies three stages of emotional development in infants in his piece, “The Emergence of Human Emotions.” Lewis looks to emotional elicitors, stimulus that triggers an emotional state in and individual, to distinguish between stages of our emotional development. Emotional elicitors are autonomic and adaptive connections to emotions (i.e., food eliciting the feeling of happiness when we are hungry) and are also learned associations (Lewis, 2000). Emotional states can be triggered automatically and have an adaptive function (fear response to a predator). However, emotional states also arise from specific cognitive functions. The best example of this, as described in Lewis’ work, was the difference between a fear of falling downstairs verses a fear of failing a test. The latter is an emotional response to a specific cognitive process. The fear of failing is a conscious thought that can lead to a very specific emotional state.
As an infant matures his or her emotional elicitors become more and more complex. At the age of six months infants display six primary or early emotions: Contentment, Joy, Interest, Surprise, and Distrust, Anger/Fear. By 18 months emotional reactions are influenced by more conscious, “self referential behavior”, which give way to feelings such as embarrassment, empathy, and envy. These are known as “self-conscious emotions” (Lewis, 2000). The second major shift in emotional expression occurs between 2 ½ and 3 years of age. This “cognitive milestone” is characterized by a child’s capacity to evaluate their behavior to that of a learned standard. This is the point at which children evaluate their behavior relative to external expectations, for example, one can feel ashamed at failing a test and that feeling is produced because personal performance doesn’t live up to an outside expectation (that of a parent or a teacher). This stage is coined “self-conscious evaluative emotions”. Lewis’ work established a fascinating way in which to approach emotions as subjective states that develop as we do.
With a sense of self-consciousness and self-awareness children are able not only to understand their own emotional states, but they are able to make inferences about the states of others. This ability is coined ‘theory of mind’ or ‘mindsight’ and is discussed in Paul Harris and Daniel Siegel’s work. Paul Harris in, “Understanding Emotion”, looks at various stages of emotional understanding when children can identify their own emotional as well as those of others. Harris focused on the influence of family discussion in shaping an individual’s ability to recognize his or her own emotions. Social and familial care can greatly affect the way one relates, understands, and identifies an emotional experience: “parental attitudes and conversation have primary impact on the child’s own emotional life, which has in turn a beneficial effect on the child’s acknowledgement and understanding of emotion” (Harris, 2000). In a study conducted by Stelle, Steele, Croft, and Fonagy (1999), as discussed by Harris, called the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) a correlation between parental communicative ability and a child’s subsequent ability to discuss emotions concluding that, “children’s understanding of emotion is prompted in a relatively direct fashion by the conversational styles of their parent” (Harris, 2000). Harris’s work explores how parental communication and care can affect a child’s ability to recognize and talk about emotions.
Like Lewis, Daniel Siegel distinguishes between varying levels of emotions growth that correlate with our physical maturation. In “Toward An Interpersonal Neurobiology of the Developing Mind: Attachment Relationships, ‘Mindsight,’ and Neural Integration”, Siegel explores the evolution of the self, and how self-consciousness correlates to emotional understanding and expression. Siegel argues that as we mature we are constantly developing emotionally, and this growth continues throughout our lifetime. As children we pass through many stages of awareness and emotional expression: “emerging self” (after birth- taking in sensory data), “core self”, subjective self” (self and self other, including sharing with others and emotions between a child and a caregiver), “verbal self” and “narrative self”. The concept of passing through different stages of emotional maturity is fascinating and I think it compliment’s Lewis’s work well. Siegel views emotions as “complex layers of processes (such as appraisal or the evolution of meaning, and physical changes (such as endocrine, autonomic, and physiological)”. For every emotional reaction there is also a subjective response; and the two are intrinsically connected.
The subjective quality of emotional experience is an interesting and simultaneously complicated subject. As humans, we move through certain stages of emotional development, yet those stages are influenced by our individual experiences and environment. In thinking and in remembering we can bring about a change in our physical state; in understanding more about ourselves we can also infer more about others around us. Subjectivity itself is a universal quality of human emotion— our emotional experiences are deeply unique, yet at the same time, our emotional experiences connect us. We can understand each other because we understand ourselves.

Response for February 14th

2007-02-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings stems from the idea of innateness vs. culturally-learned aspects of the processes and functions of language. All four articles focus on the relationship between language, and its culture and emotional context. All of the research stem from Ekman’s study of the universality of recognition of facial expressions. We now know that automatic nervous system activity and vocal expression are cross-cultural and “the recognition, expression, and experience of certain emotions are general across cultures,” (Niiya, 1). The authors this week are emphasizing that while the propensity for emotions may be equal, the display rules and what is deemed appropriate/inappropriate is culturally-acquired. Thus, emphasis varies, but capacity doesn’t.
In Lanquist and Bartlett’s study, they bring up previous studies of the universality of focal colors and relate it to the universality of ‘primary’ emotions. However, more detailed recent studies indicate that language plays a large role in distinguishment between color spectrums. Furthermore, language has a huge role in visual-spatial representations and display rules.
Language involves memory, processing, retrieval and production. Landquist and Bartlett use Semantic Satation to determine how large of a role language has on emotional perception. By manipulating and encumbering the neural pathways with satiation, involved in
Words were satiated by repeating them aloud 30 times. The “control” was word priming, which involved repetition of the word 3 times. The studies showed that when the word had been satiated, it was more difficult to access the meaning of the word. The latency period that took place in recognizing the facial expressions in those who had been satiated indicated that the participants had to compensate for the difficulty in accessing the word significance by taking more time to answer correctly. However, when the facial categorizations in study 1 were irrelevant to the word, the people did not take more time. Since much of research is difficult because it involves emotional accounts and verbal production (which may alter the very process or aspects of the emotional life itself—much like the Heisenberg effect), the researchers decided to ask the people to categorize and recognize an emotion without verbal cues. Relevant categories were compromised when the word was satiated, supporting the LRH. In study 3, time became a factor. All three of their studies were consistent and tried to show that “making any emotion word less accessible interfered with the perceptual matching of faces depicting emotion,” and that “language can be satiated, and doing so interferes with the perception of emotion in others.” Language plays a large role in emotional perception, even when the task does not involve explicit language.
These researchers later bring back the discussion to evolution’s role in language overload and satiation.
I have several problems with this study, mainly that there was no actual control group. Plus, the data is not that strong and oftentimes, it seemed that they were just trying to support their hypothesis instead of having enough hard data. Future studies should get a larger, more randomized sample and should involve non-emotional words prior to the task of labeling emotions in faces.
These studies are particularly important because they all determine how much language can be manipulated based on context and how much of it is hardwired. Furthermore, they assess the degree of and relationship between universal versus cultural-specific aspects of emotional life. Much ground work in psychology of emotions has not been cross cultural, and lacks empirical data or sufficient technology/research. I think that while the studies we read were interesting, we do not have sophisticated-enough tools to measure IC and brain activity. A basic human need is the need to belong and to communicate or mask emotions. While much of communication is non-verbal, language is the only means that we can concretely explain ourselves. Recent studies measure and highlight the differences (and similarities) between independent and interdependent cultures, emphasizing what is important for each culture. Emotions are usually either emotionally-bonding or emotionally-distancing (Kemper). What is stressed by both writers is that much of cross-cultural emotional research is too categorical/dichotamizing, “Universality and cultural relativity are not mutually exclusive,” (Mastumoto, 17), cultural differences do not indicate non-universality. For example, while the conditions for Amae (such as degree of inappropriateness and control) differ, Matsumoto’s study shows that Amae can exist in cultures that do not have a word for it. Context and cultures undoubtedly play a large roll, but I think the similarties far outweigh the differences.
Again, in Ochsner’s article on gender differences (using the Symposium paradigm) show that though there are differences in expression and emphasis, there are “remarkable similarities between men and women in neural, experimental, behavioral and physiological correlates of emotion.”(86). It is shown that people tend to react in like with their gender stereotypes, perhaps as a result of expectations. So, how much of are actions are subconsciously to re-affirm already delineated gender/cultural stereotypes? This is evident in little kids when they seem to naturally and voluntarily partake in gender-specific activities.
What is important and highlighted in all of these studies is that what we see in other’s faces isn’t the only way we discern emotion. In fact, language and culture plays a much larger role.
What I find interesting is Niiyi’s point on the way bilingualists’ brains work. When bilingualists speak, they refer to two different frames of mind and look at their situation differently, based on which language they are thinking/expressing in. This gives them more understanding of intercultural differences. Furthermore, “Bilinguals have reported different personalities, judge emotions differently, appraise events and the environment around them differently, and attribute the causes of events differently depending on the language used when performing these tasks. Not only do multiple cultural frameworks exist in their minds, but bilinguals also have the added ability to monitor which cultural frameworks they should engage in depending on the social context,” (11). Americans are mostly monolingual, whereas the majority of the world is multi-lingual. Since most psychological research is done in American English, this presents a problem and an inaccuracy in language processing, highlighting the shortcomings of previous research.
All of the articles point out that brain science knows that there are specific brain areas involved in facial recognition and processing, but don’t know what becomes activated when certain emotions are judged. Plus, many physiological responses for emotions are similar. It is also difficult to single out an emotion, as many feelings are a mixture of two or more. As backed by Matsumoto, the goal in future studies is to develop more sophisticated machinery and to merge the discipline of psychology with that of medicine, sociology, neuroscience, and anthropology, as to gain a better understanding of emotional life.

Response for Feb. 14

2007-02-12T13:36:00.000-05:00

Let us begin with the notion of evolution, change and adaptation, in mind. An individual with only 20 years under their belt has lived long enough to see this in action. Styles, lifestyles, clothing styles, conversational styles are constantly undergoing change. While some individuals seem to be adapting new ways seasonally others remain in the sixties. Individuals undergo these changes and adaptations in an effort to find a way to successfully live in their given society. We find routines that work for us both on an individual level as well as within the greater social context in which we live. As one of these components change (either us or the greater society) we are often challenged to find a new style that will function successfully for both. What does this have to do with the relationship of language and emotion, or the difference in emotional perception across cultures or even genders? As different cultures have evolved due to unique social and environmental challenges, so have the languages, lifestyles, and relationships.

Although approached in different ways, the issues discussed in this weeks readings share a common theme— the linguistic and cultural impact on the expression and perception of emotions. The issue of cultural impact on emotion and even communication in general is incredibly interesting and complex, however, I would like to focus on the relationship between language and emotion. The article, “Language and the Perception of Emotion” evoked a shocking amount of skepticism. In this article, a preliminary attempt to demonstrate a link between emotions and language was described (in repetitive detail). Although their work raises some interesting questions, their results were lacking due to their failure to address important issues.

Based on their interpretation of the results from three studies, the authors confidently provide what they considered to be a worthy demonstration of the impact of language on one’s ability to perceive emotion. In each study the subjects received one of two treatments, they either underwent “semantic satiation” or they were “primed”. By utilizing the technique referred to as “semantic satiation” the investigators were basically able to establish in individuals a temporary fog surrounding a specific word (and possibly the network of words closely associated with the given word). This was accomplished by having a subject repeat a specified word 30 times (in this case the word was associated with an emotion i.e. anger). The control group consisted of those who were “primed”. In order to be primed, one simply had to repeat the specified word three times. I am not sure I understand the purpose of saying the word three times, which presumably does not cause temporary habituation. Would it not be important to have a group that does not recite the word at all prior to the tasks that follow?

Following semantic satiation, the subjects were given different emotion assessment tasks. Some of the tasks required verbal responses and others did not. Those who had undergone semantic satiation seemed slightly less effective in identifying emotions regardless of whether a verbal response was required. (It would have been interesting to so see the responses to ambiguous/neutral faces.) According to the authors, “…our findings demonstrate that language influences people’s ability to perceive emotion, even when a perceptual task does not require the explicit use of language.” (134) Such a conclusion seems too far-reaching and inappropriate based on their data. Although there is an apparent correlation between semantic satiation and emotional perception, any conclusion beyond this (such as cause and effect) is not substantiated by their data.

How else might one interpret these results? The authors acknowledge that through semantic satiation the network of words one may associate with the given word may also become temporarily less accessible (or habituated?). The human body is thronged with complex networks communicating with each other on a multitude of levels. With this in mind one must consider the possibility that when one pathway is disrupted by temporarily inhibiting language (via semantic satiation) other relevant processes may also have been affected. Perhaps language was not the only thing satiated. Was anything else compromised in this process? Is there a way to measure other areas that may have been affected or controls that could be used to prevent the satiation of other devices we rely on to interpret and communicate emotion? It seems that there are a number of variables at play that have yet to be identified (or overlooked) by the researchers.

Another issue that warrants consideration is the nature of “semantic satiation”. The described results of this process may seem counterintuitive. It is interesting that by stressing a word an individual is less effective in assessing the presence of the corresponding condition, rather than hyper aware of the specific state. Isn’t repetition a valuable way of learning?
Ultimately this is an interesting study, but there is a major gap between the construct of what they are measuring and what they are trying to prove/what happens in real life. Although they may have demonstrated a correlation between language and emotional perception, they provide insufficient data to explain cause and effect. They do raise a number of interesting questions for future consideration. Do their findings have any real life applications at this time?

Further questions:
-Does this imply that we have become habituated to or unaware of highly common behaviors or emotions in our environments? (a more permanent satiation process)
-What if in addition to repeating a word they invoked specific emotional states, how would that have affected their interpretation of emotion? SATIATION CAUSES DISINTEREST, EMOTION GETS INTEREST
-The words that were satiated were among the basic emotion vocabulary. Although I disagree with the authors in terms of the meaningful relevance of these studies to the link between language and emotions, it would be interesting to semantically satiate a word that is associated with a specific emotion. For instance if someone was afraid of snakes and they repeated the word snake thirty times would you observe similar results to the individual that recited the word fear thirty times?

Response for February 14th, 2007

2007-02-12T04:56:00.001-05:00

The four articles that we read for this week’s class all deal with emotions and the impact that culture and gender have on a person’s perception of emotions. Each article presented a different way of approaching emotions analytically which only adds to the confusion of understanding one’s personal emotions. At the same time, knowing that there are many influences on how emotions are understood can help clarify one’s personal definition of emotions. I found the Semantic Satiation that Lindquist spoke about in her essay “Language and the Perception of Emotion” the interesting place to try and combine all the other theories that we read about in the other articles.

Semantic Satiation is used to manipulate certain effects on a person’s perception of emotion. The way that this happens is that an emotional word is repeated out loud three or thirty times by a person and then they judge a word or object that is either like the repeated word or not like the repeated word. Now, how would this have influenced Westerners if the emotion word had been the Japanese-culturally bound Amae? Would this satiation been able to condition Amae into Westerners so that they are able to understand what the Japanese mean when they experience the inappropriate requests from loved ones. Even while reading the article by Niiya, it was hard not to have a completely negative connotation to the experimental situations that had Amae. My independent nature was trying to overpower my understanding of Amae. In the end Americans could experience Amae without labeling the situation which is what Matsumoto was talking about.

In “Cross-Cultural Psychology in the 21^st Century”, Matsumoto discusses the cultural similarities and differences in all cultures. When applying these similarities and differences to an emotion like Amae, it helps to understand why Americans could grasp the concept without being able to define the situation the same way as Japanese could. Both cultures were able to see the intensity in the situations of a close person requesting an inappropriate favor. Both Japanese and Americans could perceive the same expressive nature in the situation as well because Americans understood what part of the situation was the most important: the moment when the requestor wants the reply from the person being requested. However, there is not emotion recognition on the part of Americans because there is no word to describe that interchange emotionally in the English language.

Most interestingly for me was the short article on gender differences by Wager and Ochsner. There were so many factors in that report that affected how women and men would respond to scenes of anger. The cultural and societal requirements that have been placed on each gender could have been influencing them to respond in a specific way to the images no matter what they actually felt. People who were being tested for their emotional reaction could have been under reporting and skewing their personal feelings in order to fit the cultural stereotype. Does this mean that we’re more interested in sticking with the stereotypes that women are more emotional and men are more reserved even though these are restricting concepts? Why is it that we want to have culturally bound emotional concepts? Is it possible to create a universal, pan-cultural emotional language? How would that affect the cultures when that would require everyone to find importance in the same emotions at similar times and to utilize the same basic emotions to express themselves? If a universal emotional database is not possible, how is it possible for each culture to understand the differences between the emotions all over the world? Would this help define emotions personally? Would this help close the gender gap in emotions?

Language is how people are able to communicate shared categories to one another, according to Lindquist, and how are men and women supposed to understand each other’s emotional language? Would that help them to understand each other better? I hope that is possible. Is it important that men and women each have their own emotional language? It’s hard to read about all the differences in emotional perception and keep your own in mind. It’s even harder to remember that the way you personally perceive emotions is not how everyone in the room with you does perceive them. Is a constant reminder necessary to get to the bottom of emotional language?

Resonse~Feb. 14th

2007-02-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

A theme that I observed in the articles for this week was the influence of culture on many aspects of emotional research. There was no doubt in my mind, prior to reading the assigned articles, that the way in which individuals, and cultures as collectives, express, perceive, understand and manifest their emotions was extremely culturally/socially influenced. In fact, before taking this class I was more of the mind that the study of emotions was fundamentally a psychological endeavor. And although I have been enlightened to the fact that perhaps the biological aspect of emotions may be fundamental, and the psychology perhaps more secondary, there is no question that the study of emotions would not be a comprehensive one without both domains working in concert.
Having established that, I believe the consideration of context within the study of emotion is vital, which is a view I share with, among copious others, David Matsumoto, author of Cross Cultural Psychology in the 21st Century. Although his article is mostly optimism about the future of cross-cultural psychological research, Matsumoto expounds upon the (short) history of the cross-cultural study of emotion, and its emphasis on the universality of emotions, specifically the six basic (or primary) emotions: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, and surprise. What he is passionate about is the differences in the expression of emotions between cultures, and the influences within the cultures that are behind those differences. He subscribes to the notion of universality, (he did, after all, study under Ekman), but Matsumoto places an emphasis on cultural differences in expression of emotions because of their essential role in cross-cultural communication. In stressing the role of facial expression of emotion, he asserts that “nonverbal aspects of communication far outweigh the verbal in communication, and much of the nonverbal communication is emotional” (Matsumoto 2001). With this he means to imply that if the proverbial “we” had a better understanding of the differences in emotional expression across cultures, perhaps communication between the former and the latter would go more smoothly. “[E]motion plays a key role in intercultural communication…especially anxiety attendant to the uncertainty in intercultural communication, and the fear, anger, and distress that often occurs in intercultural misunderstandings” (Matsumoto, 2001).
The main examples Matsumoto used in this article are the differences found between Japanese and American participants. He lays special emphasis on “display rules” that people learn early in life. These display rules manage and modify the universal emotions based on the social circumstance and what the individual’s culture has prescribed. One of the key distinctions he found between Japanese and American culture is that the Japanese tend to be “collectivist” people, and the Americans “individualist” people. This means that in Japan, value is placed on group harmony and interdependence, with less emphasis on the individual. In American culture, individuality is embraced, and emotional expression, both positive and negative, is encouraged. This dichotomy, between individuality and conformity, forms the basis for the studies that Matsumoto gives further details about. Because of the aforementioned differentiation, with the inclusion of other variables and culturally specific information, for instance, Americans tend to associate facial expressions as being more intense than the subjective experience. On the other hand, the Japanese rated the subjective experience of the same expressive faces to be at a higher degree of intensity. An interesting conclusion surfaced from that specific study, highlighting the importance of further research into cross-cultural psychology: "Previously, we suggested that American-Japanese differences occurred because the Japanese suppressed their intensity ratings, as they do their expressions. However, it was the Americans who exaggerated their external display ratings relative to subjective experience, not the Japanese who suppressed" (Matsumoto, 2001).
I feel as though the article about the emotion “amae” is a more specific example of the cross-cultural, or culture-modified, nature of emotions, so I won’t discuss it here. Another aspect of Matsumoto’s article I found noteworthy was the idea of “folk” psychology (or “naïve” or “common sense” psychology). Folk psychology is defined as a set of background assumptions and socially conditioned opinions that work their way into a culture’s way of life, and influence their judgment of others behavior. It’s specifically interesting in terms of display rules and its rather large role in the way in which people verbally communicate their emotions. Sometimes there’s no telling how far back a certain cultural belief goes in terms of origin, yet it is these engrained values, ideas, and attitudes that defines a community, and gives them a model for their behavior, including the way in which they express their emotions, and judge others emotions. Matsumoto, through numerous examples, drives home the point that including all these variables in cross-cultural studies is very difficult, but necessary to arrive at any semblance of accurate, usable, information.

Response 2.14.07

2007-02-11T15:27:00.000-05:00

Niiya, Ellsworth, and Yamaguchi’s “Amae in Japan and the United States: An Exploration of a ‘Culturally Unique’ Emotion” investigated cross-cultural similarities and differences within language and emotion and how they affect each other. It focused on Amae, a word in Japanese roughly meaning (according to Doi) ‘to depend and presume upon another’s love or bask in another’s indulgence’ (280), which we have no word for in English. The article grounded us with a brief history of the study of emotion and expression (Darwin, Ekman, Izard, etc.) and then began questioning the possibility of emotions only existing in certain cultures or the possibility of all emotions being universal but merely emphasized in some societies by language and culture. The article introduces Levy’s theory of ‘hypercognized’ or ‘hypocognized’ emotions, which ‘suggests that emotional lives vary across cultures because of differences in emphasis, not fundamental differences in capacity, and that the emotions of one culture may not be completely incomprehensible to members of another culture’ (279). At this point I remembered a conversation I had had with my host sister when I went abroad to China. I had been sharing a small room with her (one out of two rooms in the apartment), and I mentioned how I needed some privacy or missed having privacy sometimes. She knew English pretty well, but had never heard the word privacy before. I explained the definition to her, and at first she didn’t understand why I would want privacy (why would I want to be alone?). Later she understood exactly what I meant, but told me they had no word for privacy in Mandarin. This example matches Levy’s theory of ‘hypocognized’ emotions as well as Averill’s “claim that ‘most standard emotional reactions are socially constructed or institutionalized patterns of response’ rather than biologically determined events” (Ledoux 116). The fact that there is no word for privacy in Mandarin boggled my mind, but the fact that my host sister could understand what I meant demonstrates that she must have felt the need for privacy or had privacy before. This verifies the difference of the Chinese and American cultures but also the similarity of the capacity of emotion in people, which is exactly what this article is attempting to prove with the Amae example. Perhaps America’s ‘hypocognized’ use of privacy relates to the ‘independence’ that Niiya, Ellsworth, and Yamaguchi discuss later in the article.
Understanding the exact meaning of Amae was slightly challenging partly because it describes an emotion that two people are mutually (or not mutually) feeling during an interaction experience—it is not a feeling that one feels on their own. Doi’s definition quoted above captures the more emotional sense of Amae, while Yamaguchi focuses on the behavioral aspects of the term. Amae is only felt in very specific situational instances—when one person asks someone else a favor expecting their wish to be granted and because of their close relationship it is okay, but if their relationship were not so close asking the favor would be considered ‘inappropriate.’ It is when the inappropriateness of asking the favor becomes appropriate because of the close relationship between the two people, and one or both people involved realize it. What is interesting is that both the ‘requester’ and the ‘receiver’ can experience Amae, which seems to be a mix of many different feelings, and this combination of feelings can be both positive and negative depending on the situation and the balancing of the positive and negative feelings. What this study proved was that because of the difference in cultures between the U.S. and Japan, Japan is more likely to feel positive Amae because of Japan’s tendency toward interdependence, while the U.S. leans toward experiencing negative Amae because of our ‘hypocognized’ use of independence and autonomy. The positive feelings of Amae can include a mix of affection, love, reaffirmation, acceptance, furthering the closeness of the relationship, getting helped, helping, getting attention, feeling in control, etc. It is when these emotions are over-indulged that positive Amae can turn to negative Amae—nagging, whining, using, being used, manipulating, getting manipulated, using power to one’s own advantage, etc. One negative Amae feeling that the authors did not discuss is guilt—the ‘requester’ may feel guilty or ashamed for having to ask for help while the ‘receiver’ may feel guilty for not wanting to help but feeling like they have to, even if they don’t feel like they’re being manipulated.
What I think we need to remember is the William James quote mentioned at the end of the article: “the trouble with emotions in psychology is that they are regarded too much as absolutely individual things” (293). We have to remember the consequences of language: “the names are categorical, but the feelings are not; they shade from one to another, and in any culture the one and the other are defined by language. People describe their emotions in the language they know, and the categories of their culture undoubtedly influence the emotions they feel” (293).

February 7

2007-02-06T03:59:00.000-05:00

The greatest debate within the readings for this week was centered on when emotions are biologically based and when they are sociologically based. In The Emotional Brain, LeDoux presented many interesting arguments from several different theorists. Some groups have asserted that the presence of emotion is inevitably biological, while those such as “Social constructivists” (The Emotional Brain, 115) feel that emotions are socially constructed. Based on all the ideas presented, I feel that emotional reactions to situations are inevitable. However, the ways in which we deal with these emotions are certainly socially constructed, as LeDoux said. To support this notion, he makes the point that people’s facial expressions often deceive them, because they are often more telling than a person’s words. We have all experienced situations in which our immediate facial expressions reveal more about our reaction than we wished for others to know. On a sociological level, individuals are conditioned to respond properly in certain situations. Reactions to different stimuli, such as fear, are certainly hugely influenced by social constructs. However, their presence within our biological makeup is inevitable.
Branching off what LeDoux said about varied emotional reactions to different situations, particularly fear, the study entitled Facial and Vocal Expressions examined the experience of the receiver and sender. The primary conclusion of the authors was the fact that receivers make many diverse deductions about a sender’s expression of emotion. Although facial expressions may fall on a universally broad spectrum, there still exists a huge range of expressions and receptions on the part of receivers. This point struck me as extremely important, because each person’s expression and reception to emotion will certainly be affected by their social experiences. As LeDoux said, the immediate presence of the mechanism is biological, but our individual responses are socially based.
The article The Naked Face made references to tests in which the subject had to decide if people were lying or telling the truth. A point made about them was that, “There is just too much information – words, intonation, gestures, eyes, mouth – and it is impossible to know how the various cues should be weighted, or how to put them all together, and in any case it’s all happening so quickly you can’t even follow what you think you ought to follow.” (The Naked Face, 2) This point was also raised in Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion, which acknowledged the fact that as much as we try to understand these expressions, they occur much too quickly. Additionally, our psychological response to them is largely unconscious, thus it becomes nearly impossible to recognize why we respond as we do.
One of the major issues throughout the readings was just how much one can judge by simply looking at someone’s face. I previously discussed the way in which our facial expressions can deceive us and what they truly reveal. The face has involuntary reactions to numerous different emotional situations, which appears to derive from the fact that these responses are primarily biological, although socially driven. This consistent battle of nature vs. nurture appears in most major issues throughout psychology and surfaces once again on a biology vs. sociology level. The debate was addressed in one way or another throughout all the readings, which led me to all of the above conclusions.

February 7

2007-02-06T02:05:00.000-05:00

In chapter 5, LeDoux highlights the ever-present role evolution plays in the formation of the brain mechanisms and expression of emotions. LeDoux proposes that emotional behaviors developed before the conscious feelings that now accompany. After all, it was the unconscious workings of the brain’s defense system that mediated the behavior necessary for animals to survive and reproduce. The conscious feeling of fear, for instance, seems less significant to natural selection than fear behavior like running from a predator.

The evolutionary origins of emotions and their behaviors also give evidence for the shared experience and brain systems of emotions between humans and animals. With the repeated example of fear, many species (including humans) share response strategies to dangers, such as fleeing, freezing, aggression, and submission along with physiological responses such as endogenous pain suppression. Regardless of the stimuli that elicit these responses, that the underlying neural circuitry of many different species share the common function of providing defense strategies makes animals good models for understanding human fear.

As LeDoux puts it, "different classes of emotional behavior represent different kinds of functions that take care of different kinds of problems for the animal and have different brain systems devoted to them." It has been shown that there is no single emotion system in the brain. It is also true that scientists have not come to an agreement on a spectrum of basic, innate emotions. This is not to say, however, that there are no inherited universals of emotion. Paul Ekman is one strong believer in the display of emotions through universal facial expressions. According to Ekman, culturally established display rules for emotional expression do not contradict the evidence that individuals of all cultures can identify the emotions behind certain facial configurations. He even went through the trouble of compiling photographs of the thousands of possible facial combinations along with their emotional connotations in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The fact that studying FACS can greatly increase the ability to interpret intent and emotional content behind expressions gives evidence for the assertion that emotions cause facial expressions. What’s even more interesting is the finding that facial expressions can cause emotions.

The article "Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion" mostly corroborates the conclusion that the facial expressions are universal representations of emotions, though cites studies that lower the degree of certainty. Vocal expressions (excluding language) are also considered as measurable results of emotion, but are found to be less reliable than faces. The review reminds us that the decided "correct" emotions corresponding to faces and voices is a subjective matter. Agreement is less common in people of non-Western nations. Are the expressions universal even if there is disagreement about which emotions and faces correspond? It may be, if Ekman and Tomkins are right. Logic does not require people to be logical, and if someone does poorly on the tests it may mean he is just not a good face reader. Societies that do not value emotional expression may not be as skilled in the area, but one might guess that they would perform better if the photographs were of members of their own culture or race, as it has been shown that people can distinguish the details of native, familiar faces better than those of foreign ones.

The article "The Experience of Emotion" took a more dimensional approach to studying emotion. Core effect, or general feelings on a positive/negative scale, is deemed a major feature of the emotional experience. Core effect includes states of pleasure/displeasure, reward/punishment, arousal/calm, etc. In addition to core effect, a mental representation of an emotion is intimately related to the surrounding psychological situation. This includes appraisal, but more broadly includes all sensory input combined with people’s memory, knowledge, and history as they have been integrated into their minds and behaviors. Such wide influences refer more to the causes of emotions of emotions rather than their experience, as we have seen that many affective factors are unconsciously processed. The article gives a review of the neural mechanisms behind core effect and the integration of experience into emotion, but admits, like in the problem of explaining consciousness, that how neural activation actually causes emotions is still unknown.

The final study, by Bechara and Naqvi, showed that activation and size of the anterior insular cortex (AIC), an area associated with the subjective experience of emotion, is correlated with a person’s ability to recognize the tempo of his heartbeats. It is interesting that accuracy is also correlated with self-reported anxiety; fast heartbeats are easier to feel than slow ones. I also wonder about the implications for size differences in the AIC. Can a larger size really predict a greater capacity to introspect? Can the conclusions even be extrapolated enough to consider the ability to sense one’s own heartbeat indicative of the propensity to understand one’s own emotions?

I’m also wondering about the emotional implications (neural, mental, and behavioral) of social isolation. Hasn’t the ability to experience emotions and sense them in others been preserved in feral children? It makes sense considering the similarities between humans and animals in emotional processing.

February 7

2007-02-05T02:30:00.000-05:00

In The Experience of Emotion, Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, and Gross address the philosophical issues that make emotions a problematic subject for scientific objectivism to approach. The authors begin with a discussion of two important viewpoints of the philosophy of mind- materialism and naturalism. They identify these opposing viewpoints as influential models for neuroscience and psychology in the study emotion but greatly favor the naturalist approach.

Materialism is portrayed as an accurate, yet incomplete paradigm for work on emotions. The authors define materialism as “the theory that mental contents are caused by and can therefore be redefined as nothing but physical processes”(2006). Materialist theories reduce emotion to pure physical phenomenon, therefore allowing mental states to be analyzed in terms physical states. The authors identify different analyses of materialism frequently used in scientific work on emotions- behaviorism (James, LeDoux), which analyzes mental states in terms of behavior; identity theory (Ekman, James, Damasio), which assigns mental states to unique brain states, and functionalism which determines mental states to be tokens of experience.

Barrett et al. reject materialism on the foundation that although these material approaches to emotions may symbolize the cause of emotions, they cannot be accurate because they do not take into account the phenomenological aspect of emotion. This phenomenological aspect is inextricable from the physical occurrence of an emotion because it is precisely what distinguishes an emotion from any other mental or physical phenomenon, like a thought or memory. I found the authors' rejection of materialism refreshing after reading James, Damasio, and LeDoux. LeDoux, in particular, I feel is overly reductionist in his definition of emotions (“biological functions of the nervous system” p. 12) as well as his description of emotional phenomenon. LeDoux's position fails to take into account the effects of complex social environments on the dynamic biological processes of brains. Instead, LeDoux seems to lapse into genetically determined representations of brain structure that rely almost solely on an unconscious basis of emotion. He uses evolution to explain the necessity of unconscious emotional processing but does not offer an evolutionary explanation of the benefits of conscious emotional experiences.

LeDoux's causal approach to emotions, however, is not surprising. Perhaps it is Barret's background as a social psychologist that provides her with a different agenda for emotions than either Damasio, or LeDoux, who are both neuroscientists and consequently, materialists. Barrett et al. favor biological naturalism as a philosophy for investigating the nature of emotions. They place an equal amount of emphasis on the “descriptive psychology of mental contents and a detailed neurobiology that entails them”. Here the authors point to verbal communication as the key to our biological emotional experiences.

How might we improve or enhance our access to introspective states? Maybe if we had a more detailed way of linguistically describing and understanding the inner processes of our mind the study of emotion would be far better off. Lisa Feldman's work on language and emotions seems to indicate that she thinks so too.

reading for feb 7th

2007-02-05T01:29:00.001-05:00

Most of this weeks readings looked at issues we have come across before: emotional expression, emotion recognition, new ways of looking at emotions categorically, neuroimaging techniques, emotion subjectivity, and the evolution of emotions, yet one issue that was brought up at various relevant times in some of the readings was the idea of “context” in dissecting and defining emotions and their processes. In the article Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotions the authors break down the connection between physical emotional expression and the internal emotion process. They claim that modern evolutionary theory partially rejects the historical interpretations of Darwin and Sylvan Tompkins (of basic, cross-species, cross-cultural emotional expressions) for a more socially relevant theory: that the “sender” of the emotional expression has a direct intention with that expression towards a “receiver”, who interprets the sender’s emotion with the vocal and physical cues provided. What the paper generally argues is that although a great deal can be deduced from these “signals” which the sender provides, they are not always accurate. This isn’t to say that the work of Tompkins and Eckman, specifically with facial expression decoding, isn’t valid, but rather, that the role of a “context” is more important then modern day scientists have been able to study. How can you break down the vocal emotional cues of a baby? Are cries and screams really a good way of measuring distress? Is there anything to be said about possible habit forming in these facial and vocal cues? Or more specifically, what kinds of roles do habit, current affective states, gender, current activation states, age, location, time, etc. play in defining these outward emotional responses.
In relation to these points, the article entitled The Experience of Emotion delves into a similar situation with the roles of content and context in defining emotional states and expressions. In the beginning of the article, the authors mention three different methods in defining emotions: the materialist idea, that emotions are defined by their causes, the behaviorist idea, that emotion is simply a behavior (in bodily states, basic emotion models, activity in neurochemical/brain circuit systems, or a combination of all these things), and the functionalist idea, that emotion is defined by immediate causal relations, specifically, the function as opposed to the brain or body. Contemporary science, in the view of this article, needs to find a common ground between these three in testing emotional responses. In addition to this, a greater awareness needs to be given to content and context in the research process of evaluating emotion on a subjective basis. This is hard to do because how do you evaluate someone’s conscious state if there is no way to see, on a first hand basis, what they are experiencing at the moment of an emotion and how that emotion comes about or is influenced by the many factors of that person’s life, current state, and relation to the space they are in? How can you relate an individual’s personal physical, sociocultural, location specific context to a simultaneously occurring emotion without seeing or experiencing it subjectively? Going along with this question, how can you effectively evaluate or define an emotion without a way of measuring the content surrounding the emotional state in addition to the actual physical response and the context, i.e. the person’s active/inactive state (what the authors call “arousal”), level of dominance/submission in their response (“relational”), or mental representation of that emotion (“situational”). All of these factors of content relate to previously discussed (in our class) notions of appraisal systems.
One key point that Ledoux brings up in chapter five of his book, The Emotional Brain, is that an “all-purpose emotion system” doesn’t exist, and that emotions need to be studied on a case by case basis is any information in terms of their cause and effect relationship is to be assessed. Different systems and different modules make up the emotional response in the same way the brain is divided. After Ledoux goes through the theories of James, Tompkins, Darwin, and Eckman, he brings up this same notion of subjectivity that was addressed in the Experience of Emotion article; that each emotional response is different in each human, at a given point of time, in a given situation. Yet, each emotion has commonalities through different cultures and species. He focuses on fear, sstating that fear is pervasive, both on a physical level and on an existential/intellectual level, fear is related to psychology, and that fear exists in humans and animals. This last point brings up the fact that survival tactics are inherent, and sometimes genetic in terms of bodily responses (with the nervous system, mental processes, and bodily functions) yet not in terms of cognitive factors. This, again, raises the issue of context (which Ledoux doesn’t go into) in that genetically even a simple emotion such as fear will not exist in the cognitive association that we all experience as individuals.
I saved the best for last with the New Yorker article entitled The Naked Face in which Gladwell discusses all of these points in a narrative fashion, with two cases in the police force and in sharing his own personal encounter with Eckman. It was particularly interesting hearing about Tomkins and Eckman’s strategies in evolving facial expression recognition as a technique, one that could be mastered with practice. Tomkins, who was said to be a natural perceiver of these facial cues, even exercised his abilities at horse races, which took into account the horses’ previous wins/losses in relation to their emotional state and physical manifestation of their emotional responses. Emotion, for Tomkins, came to be seen as the “code of life” in interpreting and predicting every aspect of personal being and social interaction. Eckman’s own use of the techniques developed by himself and Tomkins proved to be very entertaining, especially when he commented on facial expression number AU two, “It’s very hard, but it’s worthless. It’s not part of anything except Kabuki Theater.”(p. 6)
The question of how the two cops accessed situations and determined whether danger existed becomes key in the issue of facial expression detection and interpretation as inherent in some but not all people. Clearly, both cops had a certain gut instinct that was tied both to their own natural perceptive abilities and experience in their professions. This point again calls to mind the idea of context, in that the abilities of the cops and the practices of Tompkins and Eckman are both natural and acquired techniques.
Another point of interest is this technique’s application to software development, as in the Maya renderings of companies like Pixar, where the facial recognition software (FACS) is used to develop realistic interpretations of emotional expression. This development could lead to a great many things in decoding emotional responses, specifically with artistic uses and surveillance, crime detection systems. It’s both useful, as Gladwell points out, and dangerous in that it opens up a whole realm of, what he calls, “uncomfortable possibilities”.
All of the articles focused on a broad range of topics we have seen before, yet what came to mind in applying all these theories we have been studying to actual manifestations and interpretations of emotional responses is the need for context to be taken into account in the definition and evaluation process. Context socially, mentally, physically, and pertaining to time, space, and other engrained factors of our consciousness. The question that we are left with is: How can you evaluate this in an objective way?

Reading Response-February7th

2007-02-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

This week’s reading focused on different aspects of the expression of emotion. The facial and bodily expressions as means for communication and expression of emotion, their origins and cultural resemblances where largely discussed throughout the readings.

In LeDoux’s chapter5, “The way we were”, he introduces us to the evolution of emotions. He thinks every emotion comes from a different network in the brain and therefore should be studied one at the time. He chooses to study fear being a primitive emotion, universal and also shared with animals. Fear is associated with survival reflexes; responses to danger are similar in every animal and society. In this perspective he uses Darwin’s work to explain the evolution of emotions. “Mind and behavior are also shaped by natural selection” which would explain the similarities in expression of emotions between animals and humans and within human societies. The innateness of the expression of our emotions I thought was very intriguing; and to think that one aspect of being civilized is learning how to control the expression of our emotions. He also brings up the idea that bodily expression is the first means of communication between the mother and the child. Even beyond the mother-infant relationship I would say that it stays a very important means of communication but that it looses it’s importance or consciousness because we are less used to using it. Is bodily expression more truthful but harder to interpret once words have been introduced? The impact of society was also presented and the differences in the way cultures express their emotions is fascinating. Is it possible to understand those differences? And in what way can those differences inform us on societies?
In this chapter he also talks about the different researches that have been done to find “basic emotion” with universal facial expression. It seems as though a lot of research has been done with a lot of various results. It appears as though some universal basic emotion could potentially exist but it seems very hard to fall in agreement.

The first article, “Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion” broke this question in two parts, one concerning the receiver and the other the sender. Different perspectives and tests exist for example using actors. This article brings up the question of how to control our emotions? And to what extend is it possible? If we can actually recognize signals throughout different societies, meaning codes do exist for all humans. Can we explain their origins and differences? The sender has different tools, for example facial or vocal and it appears that we express our emotions that way only in public, which enhances the importance of bodily expression as a means of communication.

The second article “The Experience of Emotion” brings up several issues. First of all it presents the different approaches that exist to the study of expression of emotion and the different aspects they all suggest. Emotion has an important subjective aspect; will research ever be able to come through this obstacle? The writer focuses on the idea of consciousness. He mentions the emotions of pleasure and displeasure has being universal and present at birth, but how can one read the emotion of a child? If we don’t have any consciousness of an emotion can we still say it is there? What is an emotion without consciousness? How can we measure it? Can an emotion exist without a feeling?

The “The Naked Face” article focuses primarily on facial expression and the work Ekman did to catalog all possible expression and their meaning. He differentiates voluntary and involuntary expression. He points out the fact that we don’t use facial expression to understand one another as much as we could. What would it be like if we actually used all those significance he found? How would our relationships change? How would it be if we could control all our expression? This article also puts forward the question of how much consciousness we have of our emotions and the ways we can express them.

Finally in the last article, “Listening to your heart: interoceptive awareness as a gateway to feeling”, the author poses the question of which comes first between body sensation and feeling? Which one is the consequence of the other; does it have to only work one way? This also was an issue in Ekman’s work when he realized that making the facial expression he had catalogued could make the feeling it was linked to arise. He also presents the difference between emotion and feeling, which I still found confusing.

The readings brought up a lot of interesting question about the expression of emotions. Some of the main issues seemed to be the cultural differences in bodily expression and our relation and consciousness to our own emotions. The definition of emotion and its location in the brain, the different functions it implies is also an important part of the research. It is a very large subject and it appears to be complicated for researches to find a common ground.

response for 1/31-reconceiving what we are looking for

2007-01-29T00:29:00.000-05:00

In the first three chapters of Descartes’ Error, Damasio relates the cases of Phineas Gage and Elliot. Phineas Gage survived an accident in which a metal rod passed through his head and Elliot had a brain tumor removed surgically. Both survived their ordeals seemingly intact with full language and motor ability. Even cognitively neither seemed to have suffered any loss of faculties. However, according to people who knew them before their traumas, both underwent complete personality change. Phineas Gage, who had been a charming man with noted leadership abilities, became socially inappropriate, prone to fits of temper and bad language, and unable to make long-term plans for himself. Elliot underwent more subtle changes. Damasio noted how remote Elliot was. His were emotional reactions nearly completely suppressed and strangely even Elliot had noticed this change in himself. Elliot participated in experiments that showed that he had the knowledge of what a good decision would be across a variety of different situations but he was unable to make advantageous decisions for himself. Both cases suggest that the disruption of a brain system disabled social and decision-making abilities in both men. Though they both had the experience and knowledge of social norms, they were unable to make use of it. Damasio asks the questions: what was disabled in both men and, even more basic, what are the usual basic steps in decision-making for human beings whose brains are intact?

In chapter 4 of The Emotional Brain, LeDoux recounts the search to identify what process in our brains accounts for our experience of emotions and ends by reorienting it. Gall had the insight that “functions [in the brain] are localized,”(p. 76), that is that each part of the brain has specific functions. However, we now know that processes are not limited to specific areas of the brain but involve networks comprised of interacting areas. Damasio describes MacLean’s limbic system theory as having enormous influence on research up until now but explains why it is inaccurate. MacLean’s theory posited that the limbic system integrated our external and internal experience and that our emotions come out of the system. LeDoux believes that an aspect of MacLean’s theory is correct: the influence of evolution (continuity between animals and human beings that Darwin proposed) is observable in the brain. Emotions are brain functions that are beneficial to our survival. But, as he says, MacLean looked too broadly at emotions in positing that all were the result of one system. Rather, “…different emotions are involved with different survival functions…” and probably involve many specialized emotional systems in the brain. (p. 103)

The article Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Human Emotions (2004) evaluates the findings of several neuroimaging studies. Phan, Wager, Taylor and Liberzon write about the findings that observed activation of specific brain structures, anticipated to be part of the neural basis of emotion, focusing mainly on limbic structures. The authors conclude that the findings suggest that certain brain structures may be involved in specific and some in more general emotion-related tasks. In the future, the authors believe more fine-tuned imaging techniques will allow researchers to identify the interconnections of brain areas in an “emotion network.”

The last article, The Structure of Emotion, looks at the evidence so far from neuorimaging studies already conducted using fMRI and PET by comparing the findings of two meta-studies.. Barrett and Wager begin the article with the question, “What are the basic building blocks of emotional life….?” and describe two central theories. The first theory (as in Paul Ekman’s work) is that there are inheritable basic categories of emotion: anger, fear, sadness, happiness and disgust. The second theory seeks to identify in the brain signs of dimensions of emotional response. The dimensions considered are: valence (pleasure/displeasure), positive or negative activation, or approach and withdrawal. To establish evidence in support of either theory, what is needed is to be able to identify patterns of activation that are consistent and specific.
It seems from this study that previous findings do not conclusively establish or rule out either of the two theories. The authors suggest that possibly a new model should be investigated, perhaps one based on “stimulus salience. “ (I’m not sure what this is.)
They end their article by recommending issues to be considered in future studies. They point out that the technology is getting much more refined, allowing much more specific study of functional regions. This may help distinguish between emotions reflected in the activity of structures of the brain. They urge researchers to study circuits rather than specific brain areas. They also point out that in looking at brain activity researchers may be observing the brain doing more than purely responding emotionally and that researchers are getting better at identifying confounding factors. Researchers need to refine their inferential process. In brain mapping they seek to evoke a certain emotional response (fear) and look to see if a certain brain structure responds (amygdala.) But whenever the amygdala is activated, is there fear?
Their final point is a fascinating one, challenging scientists to dismantle the conceptual framework for what they are looking for. Perhaps our “emotion words” (fear, sadness, happiness, etc.) do not map out to distinct events in the brain. As I understand it, the authors suggest that researchers might look at brain responses to conceive a new understanding: observe how emotions created from psychological processes play out in neural systems, then allow this understanding to reshape how we conceive of emotions.

This last article raises the issue Elizabeth and Leah were suggesting we look at next, the role of language in understanding emotion. How specific is our language for emotion really? Are even emotions we understand as easily distinguishable from others (happiness, for example), really an experience as distinct from other emotions in our actual brains as we conceive it to be?
When LeDoux posits the existence of many emotional systems in the brain does this fit within Phan, Wager, Taylor and Liberzon’s idea that there is an “emotional network”?

Two Opposing Theories on Emotion

2007-01-28T20:31:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings focused primarily on the location of emotions in the human brain. In Descartes’ Error, the case studies of Phineas Gage and Elliot were discussed and compared. In The Emotional Brain, various theories of brain function and emotion were highlighted including the famous limbic system by Paul MacLean. We concluded with two research studies that used neuroimaging (PET and fMRI) to test current hypotheses regarding emotion.

In Descartes’ Error, the case of Phineas Gage was examined in depth. It is one of the most fascinating examples of brain disorder. Phineas Gage was struck by a metal rod while working on constructing a railroad in Vermont. “The iron enters Gage’s left cheek, pierces the base of the skull, traverses the front of his brain, and exits at high speed through the top of the head”(Damasio 4). Gage physically recovered from his wounds but his personality was forever changed. He was fitful, impatient, obstinate, and demanding. He no longer had the ability to hold a steady job. He seemed to have no sense of morals, ethics, or responsibility. Gage’s personality change was due to a brain lesion which impaired one area of his brain but left the other areas intact.

Gage’s incredible case started a buzz in the field of brain science. Two opposing views of brain function emerged from the frenzy. The first theory stated that psychological functions, such as language and memory were not isolated to specific regions of the brain but were part of an integrated system. The second theory opposed the first theory and stated that psychological functions were found in different regions of the brain. The debate between these two theories continues to this day.

The case of Elliot occurred many years after Phineas Gage but exhibited similar effects. Elliot had frontal lobe damage and showed signs of personality change. He was able to perform normally on various memory tests used to assess frontal lobe dysfunction. He behaved and performed ‘normally’ within society. However, Elliot’s emotional state was slightly off. He was disengaged, calm, and dispassionate when recounting horrifically tragic events. He expressed no pain over the tragedy. It was clear that damage to the frontal lobe had created a blockage in Elliot’s emotional response. Do Elliot and Pineas Gage provide evidence to support the second theory of emotion? Are emotions located in specific regions of the brain? Or do these two cases support the first theory? Is the damage blocking emotional pathways connected to various regions of the brain?

The Limbic System theory of emotion is the most accepted theory today. Previous theories on emotion helped to create it. The Limbic System theory has roots in Phrenology which was the study of brain mapping. Bumps were traced on the human head dividing the brain into various functions. The theory of localization of brain functions originated out of Phrenology. Since then, numerous neuroscientists have been trying to prove (or disprove) localization. Philip Bard “carried out a systematic series of lesion studies aimed at finding just what parts of the brain are required for the expression of rage”(Le Doux 81). Bard found that the critical lesion was on the hypothalamus. He labeled it as the centerpiece of emotion.

In opposition to localization, James Papez, a Cornell University anatomist, developed the Papez Circuit. Sensory inputs flow through the thalamus before splitting into two streams. The ‘stream of thought’ is channeled to the lateral areas of the neocortex while the ‘stream of feeling’ is channeled to the hypothalamus.

The Limbic System was developed by Paul MacLean. The hippocampus was believed to receive inputs from the external world as well as from the internal environment. The emotional experience occurred when internal and external sensations were combined together.

The Structure of Emotion paper compares two approaches to the study of emotion. Meta-analyses were conducted and the results analyzed. The basic emotion approach states that certain categories of emotion are biologically basic-inherited, reflex-like modules that cause a distinct and recognizable behavioral and physiological pattern. The dimensional approach states that these same emotional categories are part of larger biological properties such as valence, arousal, positive and negative activation, approach and withdrawal. The experimenters discovered that the right and left amygdalae were activated with the emotion fear, that the forward portions of the anterior cingulated cortex were activated by sadness, and that the basal ganglia activated the emotion disgust. The experimenters concluded from their study that in order to better understand emotion in the brain “researchers need to move from studying singular brain areas to identifying circuits, because a given brain area may be involved in more than one functional circuit” (Feldman Barrett & Wager 83). The opinions expressed in this research paper belong to the first theory that emotions are not isolated to specific regions of the brain but are a series of integrated systems.

The Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Human Emotion uses PET and fMRI to test various hypotheses about emotion. They found that the amygdala was critical to fear-related processing; the medial prefrontal cortex is involved in emotion-related decision making and emotional self-regulation, the insula is the brain’s alarm center that combines internal somatic cues with emotional experience. The experimenters concluded that some regions of the brain are involved in specific emotional tasks while others are involved in more general emotional tasks. The opinions expressed in this research paper belong to the second theory that emotions are found in different regions of the brain.

This week’s readings highlighted and discussed the two basic theories on emotion and provided research to back up both sides of the debate. However, the debate does not seem to be resolved and we do not seem to be any closer to knowing how emotions function in the brain.

Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Penguin Books.

Le Doux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Feldman Barrett, L. & Wager, T.D. (2006). The Structure Of Emotion: Evidence From Neuroimaging Studies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 15, pp.79-83. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/tor/

Response to 1/31 readings

2007-01-28T18:28:00.000-05:00

This weeks reading is composed of detailed literature that illustrate how scientist have been trying to map the brain. There has been much focus on trying to match specific elements of the human mind, such as memory and emotions, to specific regions of the brain. This has been accomplished by studying individuals who have had brain trauma or by inducing trauma with brain lesions and trying to match up the mental defect with the location of the brain damage.

More recent advances in neuroimaging have provided scientist with fMRI and PET scans to monitor brain activity in the presence of stimuli. An fMRI measures increases in cerebral blood flow in specific regions, which may not be caused by metabolic demands as it initially appears to be, but instead driven by the presence of neurotransmitters such as glutamate. PET scans on the other hand use a radioactive isotope that decays over time and releases positrons that are detected through out the body.

In the review article “Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Human Emotions” they use these methods to determine if there are patterns of brain activation when they elicit different emotions with a range of emotional tasks. Though out the article they summarize how specific regions are active when specific emotions are induced. The amygdala for instance is shown to be involved in “fear-related responding” where it is the most active when participants have been shown fearful faces, even if they are unconscious of the fact that they are seeing fearful faces. I wonder though how the researchers can be so certain that just by having the participants classify the faces by gender rather than emotion that they are assuring unconscious perception of the facial expressions. Yet from their technique they deduced that perhaps the amygdala might be responsible for signaling a threat instead of evoking fear. The description of their results brings to mind how only certain areas of the brain, and even certain areas of the amygdala are activated when stimulus is conscious or unconscious in the subject. There seems to be conflicting evidence around whether if the amygdala is under a “top down control” where activity in this region is dependent on the amount of attention the participant pays to the stimuli and hence would help define its precise role in the emotion fear.

My problem with reading this article is that it brings to light the difficulty with identifying a specific region as being responsible for a particular mental faculty. As stated in the conclusion of “The Emotion of Fear”, researchers need to put less energy in identifying a specific region with a specific function, and more with identifying circuits in the brain as they run through specific brain regions. As it was seen with Phineas Gage and later Damasio’s patient Elliot, it was almost impossible to locate the specific problem that Elliot had when it came to decision-making. That might be why doctors thought that the problem was not physical but instead psychological. It was obvious that the tumor had caused brain damage in a general location, but his actual mental defect was difficult to locate as it seemed that somewhere along the decision making process Elliot lacked a tool needed to make a decision that was in his best interest. As the third chapter of Damasio’s story illustrates, it was a frustrating task to pinpoint Elliot’s problem with the use of tests commonly used by psychologists. It seemed that the tests were unable to properly identify the problem he was having with real life scenarios, hence making his case hard to prove as they attempt to show it is a physical disability.

What Damasio did conclude was that Elliot had a “reduction in emotional reactivity and feelings”(p.51) that effected his reasoning and decision making processes. This very concept goes against some basics in western philosophy such as the difference between reason and emotions. What I need to understand now is how emotions help us make proper decisions when all this time I thought it would inhibit my ability to make decisions.

Response to 1/24 Readings

2007-01-24T23:41:00.000-05:00

The Evolution of the Study of Emotions

As LeDoux noted, I like the majority of my peers felt I understood what emotions were until I was asked to define them. Unfortunately, scientists appear to have the same problem. In order to understand emotions, it is important to analyze the evolution of psychology and philosophy.

The first scientists who attempted to analyze, define, and understand the mind and emotions were the ancient Greeks. Unfortunately, the Greeks were so preoccupied with rationality, logic, and reason that they devalued “irrational” emotions. Plato himself considered emotion and desire to be horses pulling the chariot of his personality driven by a charioteer of reason. Emotions were deemed primitive, uncontrollable and lesser, while our noble logic and reason set us apart from the animals. This duality caused and still causes an incalculable influence on the study of emotions. However, the Greeks also recognized the existence of “knowable” and “unknowable” thoughts, making them the first to recognize the existence of the unconscious.

After the Greeks came Descartes, who with his now infamous “I think therefore I am” philosophy completely disregarded any form of unconscious thought. He believed only in conscious, rational thought. Consequentially, animals were considered “mindless” and emotions continued to maintain their “primitive” status. Eventually however, unconscious thought received a new significance with the emergence of Freud and his psychoanalytic theories. Freud reestablished the link connecting humans and animals through our shared unconscious thoughts, instincts and desires.

Soon after, the field of psychology underwent a period dominated by behaviorism. The behaviorists did not believe in the mind in the traditional sense, instead believing that every instance of human cognition, emotion and action is simply the result of prior occurrences. The true motives for our actions does not come from within, but rather from environmental and usually abstract external sources like education, religious instruction, parents, peers, role models and social mores. Therefore, conscious thought was merely the predictable result of our conditioning and unconscious thought was again invalidated.

Fortunately, many scientists believed the behaviorists to be far too simplistic and consequently developed cognitive science. Cognitive scientists reverted back to the ancient Greek philosophy when analyzing the mind, but developed it. They considered the mind as a machine. However, cognitive scientists continued to emphasize cognitive thought i.e. memory, language, perception, learning, etc. while emotions were largely understudied and misunderstood.

This brief synopsis of the evolution of the study of emotion as noted by LeDoux highlights one glaring misconception: that emotions are less important than cognition. Instead of recognizing the equally important and indivisible qualities of the two, scientists have actively attempted to polarize the two ideas, and only legitimizing the latter. The significance and even the existence of unconscious thought and emotions have been traditionally diminished. This is directly related to the misconception that relates emotions with subjectivity and cognition with objectivity. It is obvious that the study of the mind is incredibly abstract and difficult to prove or disprove potential theories. Therefore in order for psychologists to appear legitmate, they are compelled to study the seemingly more objective aspects of the mind (cognitive thought) while largely ignoring the more subjective areas (emotion). Evidence of this continuous association between objectivity (i.e. scientific legitimacy)/cognition and subjectivity/emotion is apparent in the subjects of the other readings. The reason for Darwin and Ekman et al’s reliance on external displays is because those are the only aspects of emotion that can be “objectively” observed and analyzed.

The other readings demonstrated that emotions are universal among humans and even animals to an extent. They are yet another biological result of evolution, just as cognitive thought and as such, cannot be deemed lesser. If organisms were better off or even capable of suppressing their “wild horses of emotion,” then they would have evolved without them. However, experience has proven their vital role and ultimate benefit for those organisms endowed with the ability to feel, express and detect other’s emotion. It would be ignorant and arrogant to continue to perceive emotion as anything less than necessary for survival and equally significant as cognitive thought.

readings for 1/24

2007-01-24T11:31:00.001-05:00

I really enjoyed the first three chapters of LeDoux’s book. He clearly laid out various different perspectives on several psychological disciplines and supported them with examples of studies that had been preformed. I found it interesting how many theories, over time, were put to rest and then reapplied and transformed many years afterwards. One concept I found myself struggling with (as I’m sure others do) was the issue of subjectivity. Because "emotions are notoriously difficult to verbalize" (71), how can one be certain that any of the tests done are valid? I think there tends to be an egocentric view as far as emotions go, and that we don’t always realize someone else’s interpretation of emotion may be entirely different than ours. On a more technical level, I was curious as to how, exactly, the split brain experiments were done; is it really possible to send information to only one section of the brain and how is this actually done?

Initial Questions

2007-01-24T11:02:00.000-05:00

From your "What is an emotion?" papers:

What is the difference between emotions and feelings?
Are there male/female differences in emotions/emotional expression?
What is the evolutionary reason for emotions – what is their adaptive value?
Why is it so difficult to repress emotions?
Why is it so difficult to understand/talk about emotions?
What is the relationship between emotions and language related to emotional experience?
How can emotions be regulated? Can we “choose” which emotion to experience (e.g. frustration turned to humor)
When does the emotional “feeling” happen?
What is the role of emotions in rational thinking?
What is it like to have a defect in emotions/emotional expression, for example, in autism?
What information do we learn from facial expressions (or other expressions of emotions)
Is there one brain/genetic system that generates all emotions?
Is there an emotional intelligence?
Is emotional expression meant to be used as a form of communication, or is it just the by-product of the physical activation of an emotion?
Do non-human animals have emotions?

Time Magazine Article

2007-01-23T17:24:00.000-05:00

Le Doux's discussion on consciousness and what conscious processes happen unconsciously is highly interesting...

This article in Time Magazine questions what processes are conscious and which ones aren't. Neuroimaging brain scans shows brain activity in coma patients ( some frequently deemed 'unconscious', but in actuality, 'minimally conscious'). This arises many issues in neuroplasticity, as well as euthanasia and how to handle those in a "persistent vegetative state." Here's the link to the video:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2370295n

The New Issue of Time "The Brain: A User's Guide" is great, you should all pick it up. Here's the link:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html

2007-01-22T00:42:00.000-05:00

Sarah Weiss
Liz Johnston and Leah Olson
The Feeling Brain
21 January 2007

The Evolution of Emotions

Throughout each of the readings assigned for this week, there was a common theme in topic – both animal and human emotions – much like the body - have gone through a long evolutionary process that has developed over time into what is so commonly viewed by psychologists and biologists today. Proof of our emotional evolution can be seen in our cross-cultural recognition of the emotions present in facial expressions, our common physical responses to our felt emotions, and from this, the way in which “…emotion and cognition are…separate but interacting mental functions mediated by separate but interacting brain systems” (LeDoux 69).
In the article “Pan-Cultural Elements in Facial Displays of Emotion,” we are shown that the human recognition of facial expressions is not socially learned, but rather an evolutionary trait that spans across cultures. Indeed, the findings from Ekman, Sorenson, and Friesen’s research unquestionably “…support Darwin’s suggestion that facial expressions of emotion are similar among humans, regardless of culture, because of their evolutionary origin” (Ekman, Friesen, Sorenson 4). This was witnessed through the respondents’ (who were selected from New Guinea, Borneo, Brazil, Japan, and the United States) “…similar recognitions of happiness, anger, and fear in all samples, and for disgust, surprise, and sadness in two out of three samples” (Ekman, Friesen, Sorenson 5).
In the chapters read from Charles Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, we are introduced to the strong connection between the instinctual physical reactions both humans and animals have in response to emotions and the evolutionary purpose of this link. Darwin’s work clearly emphasizes that many habitual physical reactions “…are of direct or indirect service under certain states of the mind…to relieve or gratify certain sensations [or] desires” yet are also tend to “…take place without any sensation or consciousness on our part, though often thus accompanied” (Darwin). These types of responses are witnessed in almost all forms of animal life, from the tendency of a young child who is learning to write to “…twist about [his tongue] as [his] fingers move” to the “…involuntary closing of the eyelids when the surface of the eye is touched,” to a dog’s inclination before going to sleep to “…turn round and round and scratch the ground with their  fore-paws in a senseless manner, as if they intended to trample down the grass and scoop out a hollow, as no doubt their wild parents did, when they lived on open grassy plains or in the woods” (Darwin).
In the chapters read from Joseph LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain, he both re-illustrates the evolutionary aspects of emotions and goes on to explore its link to cognition. By this, LeDoux aims to show how emotions interact with the brain’s cognitive functions – seen in such examples as the brain’s ability to detect “…the emotional meaning of a stimulus…before the perceptual systems have fully processed the stimulus,” and how this serves as evolutionary purpose for the brain to “…know [whether] something is good or bad before it knows exactly what it is” (LeDoux 69).
In essence, each reading has shown that the evolution of emotions has and continues to guide the daily reactions of humans and animals to common stimuli from the environment, and while perplexing at times, has unquestionably aided the survival of animal life.

Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. http://www.darwin-literature.com/The_Expression_Of_The_Emotions_In_Man_And_Animals/0.html.

Ekman, P., et al. (1969). Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotion. In Science Magazine, iss. 164, pp.86-88.

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Alee's Reading Response

2007-01-21T23:06:00.000-05:00

The Evolution of Emotions

ALee Russell
The Feeling Brain
1/24/07

For years scientists have been trying to find the appropriate way to dissect the complex science of human and animal emotions. It has been approached from both psychological and biological vantage points, trying to piece together the framework of our feelings. In this weeks readings we start with Darwin’s evolutionary approach to emotions as he attempts to explain the importance of expression as a source of communication in our early ancestors. Within the next reading, the authors take Darwin’s work a step further and search for a common link within the facial expressions of other cultures across the globe. The final reading by LeDoux focused on his study of the process that leads to an emotional as well as physical response. The study of emotions is an ongoing one, a field in which much has yet to be discovered, but each of these readings provides pivotal building blocks to further the understanding of emotions.
Charles Darwin, writer of The Origin of Species and evolutionary theorist, has become known as one of the most influential men in the world of science. He has set much of the groundwork for many fields including the study of emotions. In his book The Expression of Emotions In Man and Animals he introduces us to his three general principles of expression. First, the idea that certain habits form to produce a desired effect, secondly, the idea of antithesis, that there are universal habits, which serve as a form of communication between one another, and thirdly, the idea of a direct action upon the nervous system that produces an involuntary reaction that we recognize as an expression. Darwin believed that both animals and humans are inherently linked in regards to emotion and expression. In his book he introduced the idea that emotions and expressions evolved from the need to communicate to survive. Darwin stressed the link between the physical aspects of emotion to the mental feeling involved with emotion. He also discussed the idea of conscious and unconscious impulses, which set a good deal of the foundation for further studies within the internal process of emotion.
Darwin also set the example for scientists Paul Ekman, Richard Sorenson and Wallace V. Friesen who set out to test pan-cultural boundaries in emotion. They conducted an experiment in which they showed photographs of the face in different states of emotion to both literate and preliterate cultures and told them to choose which emotion was being portrayed. Generally the results were an affirmative for the facial cues expressed in the photographs. This experiment, however, chose only Caucasian faces as the stimuli, which may have affected their results. Their experiment, despite its flaws, confirms the idea that in both literate and preliterate cultures emotions, specifically facial expressions can be recognized across cultures. These results further confirm Darwin’s theories that across species, facial expressions are used as a form of communication and can be recognized universally.
Joseph LeDoux, as a cognitive scientist, takes a more brain-centralized approach to the study of emotions. In the first three chapters of his book, The Emotional Brain, he discusses questions that scientists have been trying to answer for years such as ‘What is an emotion?’ and ‘what comes first? The emotion or the bodily reaction/response?’ The second and third chapters examine the progression of cognitive scientists and their struggles with combining functional reasoning and logical mind with the emotional, feeling brain. In chapters two and three he traces the progression of cognitive scientists and his own theories on the processes that lead emotional responses to emotional experiences. He stresses the fact that unconscious mind as an important component in the study and understanding of emotions, saying that much of our responses to stimuli occur subconsciously.
The mysterious field of emotions has been approached from psychological and biological ways both never fully understanding the complete package of our emotions. Darwin, LeDoux and other scientists have spent their lives attempting to answer the complex question of what an emotion is. Scientists have worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between the psychological and biological aspects of emotion. There is still much that we don’t know about our own internal processes, but through research in both fields we are getting closer to our goal of understanding our emotions.

Readings:

Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. http://www.darwin-literature.com/The_Expression_Of_The_Emotions_In_Man_And_Animals/0.html.

Ekman, P., et al. (1969). Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotion. In Science Magazine, iss. 164, pp.86-88.

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Jake's Reading Response

2007-01-21T17:06:00.000-05:00

Jake Szczypek
Reading Response #1
1/21/07

The Role of Bodily Expressions in Emotions

In responding to the class readings, this paper aims to summarize some of the interesting points the authors made regarding, in particular, the bodily expressions of emotions. Some comparisons will be made between the readings, but the point of this response is not to evaluate the readings, but to summarize what I found most compelling.
According to LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain (1996), emotions typically involve bodily responses that seem to be “an integral part of the overall emotion process” (LeDoux, 1996, p. 40). Just as in William James’ What is an Emotion?, LeDoux acknowledges this important role that the body plays in the study of emotion. In fact, LeDoux claims that the expressive responses produced by emotions are so specific that one can communicate quite effectively without speech. It is common knowledge, of course, that deaf animals often communicate without speech and do so effectively, but what is most interesting is that Darwin’s studies of “lower animals” came to the same conclusion with little knowledge of cognitive science. According to Darwin’s principle of antithesis, a specific bodily expression correlates to a specific emotion, but if an “opposite state of mind is induced” (Darwin, 1872, ch.2, p.1), than the correlating bodily expression will also be opposite. In order to support this principle, Darwin indicates that hearing impaired humans use opposite gestures in expressing opposite emotions. Therefore, a logical conclusion would be that an animal’s bodily response to happiness should be the opposite of an animal’s bodily response to sadness.
The Ekman, et al. article, Pan-Cultural Elements in Facial Displays of Emotion (1969), confirms how bodily expressions (specifically of the face) are, for the most part, universally recognized in literate and preliterate cultures. This supports Darwin’s claim that the human race has possibly inherited many of these bodily expressions of emotions, because otherwise one would have to be taught that a smile is indicative of happiness in order to associate the two. However, it seems that a smile is universally associated with happiness, indicating that it is a true emotional expression that is somehow inherent to the human race.
According to Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), the “useless” bodily expressions or reflexes in animals are sometimes inherited habits or instincts that come from the species’ ancestry. The response to a fearful situation, for example, typically involves a fight or flight response which, in turn, involves many bodily reactions (pounding heart, sweaty palms, etc.). Accordingly, Darwin claims this involuntary sequence of bodily reactions to be a reflex that allows no time for an animal’s consciousness to decide how to appropriately react. Over a century later, LeDoux comes to the same conclusion when comparing cognition to emotions. He states that cognition differs from emotions because cognition affords an individual to think about how to respond in a given situation, while emotions do not. However, it is unclear as to whether emotions are truly separate from cognition in the unconscious.
Consequently, LeDoux discusses how the unconscious mind is a major proponent in the study of emotions. Since it is difficult to study the unconscious workings of emotional reactions, much of the theories surrounding emotion are based on “the feelings through which we know our emotions” (LeDoux, 1996, p.41) which only occur after we have “become conscious of the unconscious workings of emotional systems in the brain” (LeDoux, 1996, p.41). Therefore, emotional states should only be “viewed as the end result of information processing occurring unconsciously” (LeDoux, 1996, p. 37). Additionally, most of the research (specifically that of appraisal theorists) has focused on our introspections on the reasons of an emotional reaction as opposed to the actual causes of such a reaction. The cause of an emotion may be very different from our proposed reason for such an emotion because of our lack of access to the unconscious processing in the brain.
Overall, the assigned readings seem to come to many of the same conclusions on bodily expressions, even though different research methods were used. LeDoux, however, went even further into the unconscious mind and the information processing that cannot be accessed by conscious introspection.

Readings:

Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. http://www.darwin-literature.com/The_Expression_Of_The_Emotions_In_Man_And_Animals/0.html.

Ekman, P., et al. (1969). Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotion. In Science Magazine, iss. 164, pp.86-88.

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Aiyanna's Reading Response

2007-01-21T14:28:00.000-05:00

Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt
January 20, 2007

The Biology and Psychology of Emotion
Leah Olson and Elizabeth Johnston

The Expression of Emotion: An Evolutionary and Cognitive Investigation

The process of understanding emotional expression in humans and in animals is challenging in that it can be approached from many different vantage points. As seen in this week’s reading, many different lens are worn when attempting to unravel the mysteries of emotional origins and their physical consequences. Charles Darwin took and evolutionary approach to understanding emotion, arguing that man and animals inherited from their early progenitors an array of emotional expressions that are advantage in species survival. He argues that emotions facilitate intercommunication, that they are innate in that we lack conscious control over them, and are universal signals, which express our needs and physical states. Building upon Darwin’s work, many scientists look to the brain and take a ‘cognitive’ eye towards the understanding of emotions; assessing how the brain perceives stimuli and responds to that stimuli. Cognitive Science, or Mind Science, as Joseph LeDoux modified, seeks to understand the processes that lead us to an emotional state of being through brain mapping and testing stimuli responses in relation to physical, bodily changes. The greatest phenomena of emotional expression is that, on a species level and often between species, whether conscious and unconscious, emotions are universally experienced and highly recognized; they are cognitive and subjective functions that enable us to better understand both our outside and internal world.
Darwin, remarkably, seems to have set the foundation for much of modern science and theory— including that of the emotional expression in man and in animals. His book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, set a precedent in the way we contextualize the role of emotions in humans and in other animals through evolutionary theory. In the first three chapters of his book, and in his concluding remarks, Darwin outlines three principles of expression: (1) habit, inheritance and association, (2) antithesis, innate, universal signals that are serviceable for the purpose of communication, and (3) emotions and their physical consequences, “direct action of the nervous system on the body, independently of the will in part of habit” (Darwin, 1872).
Darwin argues that humans and animals are highly expressive, that their emotional states are linked with habitual or inherited behaviours and with physical, bodily changes, such as increased heart rate and facial contortions. Darwin’s three principles intertwine to create a repertoire of emotional expression: “Actions, which were at first voluntary, soon become habitual, and at last hereditary, and may then be preformed in opposition to our will.” Darwin uses adult and infant humans, dogs, cats, and other mammals to demonstrate the universal qualities of emotion.
Recently, studies conducted on the recognition of emotions cross-culturally have supported Darwin’s original hypotheses: “that the study of the theory of expression confirms to a certain limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some lower animal form, [evolving from a common ancestor] and supports the belief of the specific or sub-specific unity of the several races. [Expressions] or the language of emotions, is certainly of importance for the welfare of mankind” (Darwin, 1872). The Pan-Cultural Elements in Facial Displays of Emotion, conducted by Paul Ekman, E. Richard Sorenson, and Wallace V. Friesen, concluded that in both literate and preliterate societies, facial expressions were positively (greater than fifty percent) recognized on a cross-cultural level. This study, however, faced two obstacles that may have mitigated the exact figures represented in its conclusion. These obstacles were (1) a language barrier that many have compromised the accuracy of translation and (2) the sole use of Caucasian faces to present an expressive image. Despite these challenges and or oversights, Ekman, Sorenson, and Friesen found that key facial expressions (Happiness, Fear, Anger, Surprise, and Sadness) were recognized cross-culturally, from New Guinea to Brazil, and Japan, “regardless of culture, because of their evolutionary origin” (Ekman, Sorenson, and Friesen, 1969). This study supports the notion that facial expressions representing specific emotions are cross-culturally recognized and that the ability to assess the moods and emotional states of others, despite language and cultural differentials, is highly adaptive.
Mind Scientists, such as LeDoux, look to the all-encompassing brain to unlock the secrets of our emotions and the physical consequences of those emotions. The ‘all-encompassing’ brain is meant to ensure that there is no distinction between the analytical, thinking brain, and the feeling, emotional brain— a point the LeDoux mandates as essential for the study of emotions. In his book, The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux discusses a question that cognitive scientists are still grappling with: what comes first an emotion or a bodily reaction; what goes on internally to make us react to an outer stimulus? LeDoux gives his readers a strong overview of the history of Cognitive Science, which has transformed greatly from William James’ proposal in 1884, to Richard Lazarus’ Appraisal Theory proposed in the 1960’s (See Figure 1). From one theory to another, the field of cognitive sciences has transformed, one step leading to the to next.

Figure 1. An example of the ways in which Cognitive Science have evaluated emotional expression (two of many that are described by LeDoux).

A. William James theory of cognitive feedback and emotional response (1884) as cited by LeDoux, 1996.

Stimulus— Response— Feedback—Feeling

B. Arnolds Appraisal Theory 1960’s, as cited by LeDoux

Stimulus—Appraisal—Action Tendency—Feeling

To understand emotions, one must also understand the brain functions that trigger our physical reactions. LeDoux offers a cohesive way to understand this process:

[Emotional responses to emotional experiences go as such] The physical features of a stimulus have to be evaluated–appraised; their significance to an individual has to be determined. [And LeDoux argues further, expounding on this theory] …the conscious outcome might be based on nonverbal intuitions, so-called gut
feelings, rather than on some verbalized set of proportions (LeDoux, 1996).

On a cognitive level, emotions occur both consciously and unconsciously; the brain is immediately involved in evaluating our external environment.
Much has yet to be explored in the field of Mind Science. The reconciliation between the feeling brain and the thinking brain is the next step to more wholly uncovering the nature of emotional reactions and states of consciousness. Our feelings and emotional states have yet to be fully understood on the level of our cognitive unconscious or through subjective introspection; however since biology (the thinking brain) and psychology (the feeling brain) are merging, an exiting interdisciplinary field awaits.

This Week’s Reading:

Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, originally published in 1872.

Paul Ekman, Richard Sorenson, and Wallace V. Friesen, 1969, Pan-Cultural Elements in Facial Displays of Emotion, Science Magazine, issue 164: 86-88.

Joseph LeDoux, 1996, The Emotional Brain, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks

Week 1: What is an emotion?

2007-01-13T12:56:00.000-05:00

In the classic paper that you will read by William James, What is an emotion?, James famously reversed common sense logic on emotions,

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, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, 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 could not actually feel afraid or angry.